Then they were off again down the hill to the left, through
Mappy springs and along the top of Ilveston copse, every yard of
which is grass, till the number began to be select. At last in a
turnip field, three yards from the fence, they turned him over, and
Tony, as he jumped off his horse among the hounds, acknowledged to
himself that Larry might have had his hand first upon the animal
had he cared to do so.
"Twentyman, I'll give you two hundred for your mare," said Lord
Rufford.
"Ah, my Lord, there are two things that would about kill me."
"What are they, Larry?" asked Harry Stubbings.
"To offend his Lordship, or to part with the mare."
"You shall do neither," said Lord Rufford; "but upon my word I
think she's the fastest thing in this county." All of which did not
cure poor Larry, but it helped to enable him to be a man.
The fox had been killed close to Norrington, and the run was
remembered with intense gratification for many a long day after.
"It's that kind of thing that makes hunting beat everything else,"
said Lord Rufford, as he went home. That day's sport certainly had
been "tanti," and Glomax and the two counties boasted of it for the
next three years.
CHAPTER XX
Benedict
Lady Penwether declared to her husband that she had never seen her
brother so much cowed as he had been by Miss Trefoil's visit to
Rufford.
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