Two Bays With the Quorn {First Day) 149 



I arrived in Leicester one rainy evening. The old town 

 looked forlorn enough. I said "evening"; it was only about 

 half-past three, but the street lamps were already lighted. 



Everyone looked pinched and cold and cross and out of 

 sorts, and no wonder. It is bad enough for a sportsman, who 

 gives liimself up to hunting five or six daj^s a week, to "hang 

 about" for a day or two, with a string of five to fifteen hunters 

 kicldng their boxes to pieces. But this sort of thing had been 

 going on during two weeks of frost that had prevented hounds 

 going out, and to cap the climax of the sportsman's misery, a 

 two days' rain had kept the riders and most of the horses in- 

 doors. 



If there is any one tiling worse than an English fog, with 

 the thermometer at about freezing, to unfit a person for becom- 

 ing an angel, it is to ride a few hours in an English railway car- 

 riage on a cold, rainy winter's day, such as I experienced get- 

 ting from London to Leicester on this occasion. The "X-Ray" 

 has a wonderful penetrating power, but the London fog stops 

 not at bones, it goes straight to the marrow. 



The railway carriages are relics of a preliistoric age. They 

 are sometimes provided with a pan of hot water for a foot 

 warmer just large enough to accommodate two ordinary sized 

 pairs of feet. If there is a woman in the compartment, the 

 hot water pan goes to her, and when she gets her feet on it 

 and her dress covers her feet, the other nine passengers can keep 

 their feet warm by stamping them, or tliinking about a hot 

 mustard bath. 



A railway compartment, which runs crosswise of the car 

 and has a door in each end, holds ten passengers, five facing 

 forward and five backward. When seated in the compartment 

 there is only about a foot to spare (no pun is intended) between 

 the knees of the two rows of passengers. (A car, or carriage, 

 has three or four of these compartments.) The train stops 

 at a station ; a passenger at one end of the compartment wishes 



