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If I had been personally acquainted with either of the two speakers, who still stood with their backs to the fire and their hands under their coat-tails, talking now about some wonderful run with the Pytchley, I should have told him I believed I had met the individual they had just been discussing; but at Brooks's it is not usual for members to talk to other members unintroduced.
"I see they're going to have another week after this with the Pytchley," said Sir Hugh to his brother. "I suppose they will or ten days. Things ain't very early this year." "I think I shall go down. It's never any use trying to hunt here after the middle of March." "You're rather short of foxes, are you not?" said the rector, making an attempt to join the conversation.
"We hunt a good bit, you know," said Franco. "We've a little box in Northamptonshire, and hunt with the Pytchley. We both have the button." One was n't in the least surprised when an English voice, proceeding from the smuggest of smooth-shaven English countenances, informed my lord that luncheon was served. After luncheon they sailed in the Spindrift. Then they played tennis.
Even with the greatest attention to diet and exercise, that horror, distemper, has attacked them, but they have made a good recovery. At the time of writing I am walking a couple of Pytchley pups, which alas, will soon go to their permanent home.
The riding that graces the Shires, that makes Tedworth and Pytchley, the Duke's and the Fitzwilliam's, household words and "names beloved" that fills Melton and Market Harborough, and makes the best flirts of the ballroom gallop fifteen miles to covert, careless of hail or rain, mire or slush, mist or cold, so long as it is a fine scenting wind is the same riding that sent the Six Hundred down in to the blaze of the Muscovite guns; that in our fathers' days gave to Grant's Hussars their swoop, like eagles, on to the rearguard at Morales, and that, in the grand old East and the rich trackless West, makes exiled campaigners with high English names seek and win an aristeia of their own at the head of their wild Irregular Horse, who would charge hell itself at their bidding.
Last season, a young man who was hunting with the Pytchley on a hireling came a cropper at the first fence, staked his mount and got a kick in the head. He was greatly distressed about the poor horse which the dealer had assured him could "jump anything," a feat that no hunter in the world can perform.
He might not be able to raise a guinea to go toward that long-standing account, his army tailor's bill, and post obits had long ago forestalled the few hundred a year that, under his mother's settlements, would come to him at the Viscount's death; but Cecil had never known in his life what it was not to have a first-rate stud, not to live as luxuriously as a duke, not to order the costliest dinners at the clubs, and be among the first to lead all the splendid entertainments and extravagances of the Household; he had never been without his Highland shooting, his Baden gaming, his prize-winning schooner among the R. V. Y. Squadron, his September battues, his Pytchley hunting, his pretty expensive Zu-Zus and other toys, his drag for Epsom and his trap and hack for the Park, his crowd of engagements through the season, and his bevy of fair leaders of the fashion to smile on him, and shower their invitation-cards on him, like a rain of rose-leaves, as one of the "best men."
But Guy was not only patient, he was actually more cheerful than I had seen him since Constance died. He liked to see his old friends, and to hear accounts of their sport with hound and gun. To do these justice, there was not one who would not give up, gladly, the best meet of the Pytchley, or the shooting of the best cover in the county, to sit for half a day in that sick-room.
They had foxes poisoned in the Pytchley last year." "It shows a d bad feeling somewhere," said the Master. "We know very well where the feeling is," said Bean who had by this time taken up the fox, determined not to allow it to pass into any hands less careful than his own. "It's that scoundrel, Goarly," said one of the Botseys.
Chesters could ride, had enjoyed the social advantages of the Quorn and Pytchley, but she hated what she called disdainfully, 'bogtrotting with Picts and Scots. She had not yet become indifferent to her husband, but she was terribly disappointed with his total lack of ambition.
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