Hunting in the Golden Days. 91 



as mistress. She knows that a bachelor who has remained 

 single so long will require a great deal of breaking in. 

 She has been told sad tales of late hours and up- 

 roarious meetings after hunting days, and although she 

 has been brought up in a sporting community she has 

 no idea of allowing muddy-booted gentlemen to intrude 

 into her drawing-room at all hours of the day and 

 night. 



" I shall have to enlarge the establishment," she 

 soliloquizes, " bachelor fare may perhaps have been 

 well enough for Goodbery all these years, but I will 

 teach him the pleasures of life when he has got a wife 

 to keep house and make things really comfortable for 

 him." 



Mr. Goodbery, all unsuspecting, is strolling down the 

 gallery, gold eye-glass in hand, minutely studying the 

 physiognomy of the Jarvis family, long departed, from 

 the time of Charles I. onwards. There are stately 

 dames with their huge white frills and embroidered 

 stomachers, looking very uncomfortable in the position 

 they have been placed by the artist, and frowning 

 cavaliers encased in relentless armour, some with 

 flowing locks, some with close-cropped hair. Two or 

 three bald-headed gentlemen arrayed in old-fashioned 

 hunting attire and mounted on impossible-looking 

 horses, make up the collection of ancient ancestors. 



Perhaps Goodbery's attention is more devoted to the 

 study of the female Jarvises than of the sterner sex, 

 for it may be noticed that he lingers before some 

 portraits for a considerable time, and returns to 

 them again. He is startled on coming suddenly upon 

 jMiss Janet working noiselessly at her wheel. For a 

 moment he appears confused, and is about to withdraw, 

 but she reassures him with a winning smile, and motions 



