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THE BARB AND TEE BRIDLE. 145 



widow within bounds. Sorely puzzled, he sat in his spacious 

 chimney nook one night smoking his pipe in moody silence, his wife 

 knitting opposite him. 



"What's the matter, John?" began his spouse. "Matter!" he 

 replied; "it's enough to drive a man mad; Mrs. Chutnee's going 

 again to-morrow, and, as sure as fate, she'll ride over the hounds 

 or do something, and get one into trouble." 



"What makes her go on so, John?" again inquired the cara 

 sposa. — " Go on ! it is go on : I think that the name for it. Go on 

 over everything ! no fence is too big for her. I like her for that, 

 but she never knows when to stop. Last week she knocked an old 

 gentleman over, and he lost a spick span new set of teeth as cost, I 

 dare say, a matter of twenty guineas ; and the day before yesterday 

 she lamed a hound as was worth a lot of money, to say nothing of 

 hurting the poor brute. I don't know what to be at with her, and 

 that's a fact, because, barring her going so fast, she is the best- 

 hearted lady ever I see." 



And John relapsed into silence, blowing mighty clouds of smoke, 

 while his wife plied her knitting-needles. But a woman's wit, in 

 difficult cases, is proverbial ; and in the watches of the night a 

 bright notion, based upon knowledge of her own sex, flashed upon 

 the anxious mind of the snoring John's wife. The result was as 

 follows. Next morning, true to time, John was in attendance to 

 accompany the fair widow to the field. They had some distance 

 to ride to covert, and after a smart spurt of a mile or two on 

 the sward, the lady pulled her horse up to walk up a hill. 



"John," said the lady (who was in high spirits), "what do people 

 here think of my riding?" — "Well, some thinks one thing, and 

 some thinks another," was the reply. 



"That's no answer," observed the- fair interlocutor; "what do 

 they say? that is the thing. I know one thing they can't say; 

 none of them can say they can stop me over any part of the country, 

 no matter how big it is." 



Opportunity, says some wise man, is for him who waits. Now 

 was John's opportunity to avail himself of his clever little wife's 

 bright idea. 



