MISS BADSWORTH, M.F.H. 217 



Miss Badsworth. " He's trying to direct the little lady 

 now ; he'll have to be talked to pretty straight." 



There was a rustle and clatter of gravel beneath the 

 bridge, and Jack silently held aloft his hat. Lavvy acknow- 

 ledged the signal with her hand, but waited a moment until 

 hounds swung back to the gully and took up the line with a 

 chorus which stirred its depths. 



There was no refuge there. Captain Majendie's forecast 

 proved wrong, for by several twists and turns, and by a 

 circular route, the direction of the hunt was changed towards 

 Clinkern Wood once more. 



Joe Summers from the rising ground watched every inci- 

 dent of the chase as narrowly as the Iron Duke surveyed the 

 progress of his troops at Waterloo. Every now and then he 

 grunted, as Lavvy, always with her hounds, patiently allowed 

 them to work out the line unaided. 



Presently a cheer came from the little figure in the stained 

 red coat as hounds caught a view of their sinking quarry, 

 and the roan was called on to extend himself to some purpose. 



At a fence not a quarter of a mile from the wood there fell 

 a silence broken by the occasional baying of a hound. 



" He's got in, Alf," Summers said. 



*' There ain't nothing there; they'll scratch him out their- 

 selves," Diccox replied. " But p'raps I'd better slip down 

 in case. It's only a bit of a rabbit spout." 



It was as he said, and before he got there the end had 

 come. 



As Lavvy rode home in the middle of the pack, with her 

 aunt on one side and Jack Morgan on the other, tired and 

 stiff though she was, she felt a sense of satisfaction that the 

 ice had been broken, and through things turning out in her 

 favour she had been less inefficient than she had anticipated. 



" Certainly old Beckford was right when he noted the 

 importance of a steady pack of hounds," Jack remarked. He 

 would dearly have liked to praise the huntsman in plain 

 words, but somehow he felt compelled to use a circuitous 

 method. 



