He was suffering most acutely for the hundred and twentieth time or so from one of Cupid’s shafts, and that too levelled by a hand against whose attacks he had always hitherto been thought impervious. This wound had been inflicted by the well-known—perhaps to some of our readers too well-known—equestrian coquette, Miss de Glancey of Half-the-watering-places-in-England-and-some-on-the-Continent, whose many conquests had caused her to be regarded as almost irresistible, and induced, it was said—with what degree of truth we know not—a party of England’s enterprising sons to fit her out for an expedition against the gallant Earl of Ladythorne under the Limited Liability Act.
Now, none but a most accomplished, self-sufficient coquette, such as Miss de Glancey undoubtedly was, would have undertaken such an enterprise, for it was in direct contravention of two of the noble Earl’s leading principles, namely, that of liking large ladies (fine, coarse women, as the slim ones call them,) and of disliking foxhunting ones, the sofa and not the saddle being, as he always said, the proper place for the ladies; but Miss de Glancey prided herself upon her power of subjugating the tyrant man, and gladly undertook to couch the lance of blandishment against the hitherto impracticable nobleman. In order, however, to understand the exact position of parties, perhaps the reader will allow us to show how his lordship came to be seized with his present attack, and also how he treated it.
Well, the ash was yellow, the beech was brown, and the oak ginger coloured, and the indomitable youth was again in cub-hunting costume—a white beaver hat, a green cut-away, a buff vest, with white cords and caps, attended by Boggledike and his whips in hats, and their last season’s pinks or purples, disturbing the numerous litters of cubs with which the country abounded, when, after a musical twenty minutes with a kill in Allonby Wood, his lordship joined horses with Dicky, to discuss the merits of the performance, as they rode home together.
“Yas, my lord, yas,” replied Dicky, sawing away at his hat, in reply to his lordship’s observation that they ran uncommonly well; “yas, my lord, they did. I don’t know that I can ever remamber bein’ better pleased with an entry than I am with this year’s. I really think in a few more seasons we shall get ’em as near parfection as possible. Did your lordship notish that Barbara betch, how she took to runnin’ to-day? The first time she has left my oss’s eels. Her mother, old Blossom, was jest the same. Never left my oss’s eels the first season, and everybody said she was fit for nothin’ but the halter; but my!” continued he, shaking his head, “what a rare betch she did become.”