A ROUGH WEEK. 193 



Anticipation is a vain thing — and never more vain than when 

 wrapped in the fancied future of fox-hunting. But for the life 

 of me, I can't help looking at that card again. Monday, 

 Grafton or Pytchley — each in a district very suitable indeed 

 for putting the last new buy to the test. Tuesday — well, training 

 is an expensive form of getting to covert, and we can better 

 afford to devote the day to schooling and to scribbling (if so be 

 that Monday will vouchsafe us a subject). Wednesday — what 

 better in the wide, wide world than North Kilworth ? — must 

 have a creditable representative under the saddle that day, or 

 certainly be lost among the camp followers of the Pytchley 

 host. Thursday, Lower Shuckburgh, so help me Nimrod ! 

 Friday Ashby St. Ledgers — may be Braunston Gorse and 

 Paradise in the afternoon. Saturday Prior's Marston, the 

 choicest and remotest comer that is hunted by the hounds 

 of Warden Hill. Let me out — to gasp with excess of hope 



and inhale the breath of kind heaven. By all that's it's 



freezing again ; and on Monday I'll be driven to making "copy" 

 on the premises, an occupation about as delicious as building 

 your own cigars out of cabbage leaves of home growth ! Two 

 days' frost is quite sufficient to tell any man all he wants 

 to know about his own stable and how it is working on, or 

 otherwise. For one other day he may entrap a few deluded 

 friends to submit with decent serenity to the ordeal of observing 

 ten or a dozen horses stripped in succession — each rather better 

 than the other, and one and all considerably more accomplished 

 than anybody else's — a good many of them moreover furtively 

 watching for a chance to expel the unwilling intruder vi et 

 armis (which means by ivory or iron). But even in the 

 indulgence of so simple and charming a resource as this, the 

 noble owner must exercise a fair degree of caution as to his 

 subject, or gnashing of teeth rather than gratification may be his 

 lot. " The old soldier " is not to be depended upon to conceal 

 his nonchalance ; a youngster, on the other hand, may by a 

 ruthless and untutored flippancy destroy at a blow all the 

 smooth complacency that his enthusiastic and wholly undeserved 



o 



