3o8 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



door of their owner, with scarcely a wet hair on their 

 ekins, a cool breeze from the north having met them 

 point-blank for the last five miles. In the course of the 

 evening, the doings of the morning were talked over, 

 much in the following strain : 



" Well, Raby," said Hargrave, " we have spent a very 

 pleasant day. Peyton is the same straightforward good 

 sort of fellow as he was when we first became acquainted 

 with him ; and how complete is his establishment in 

 everything ! " 



" There is no better," said Jack Webber, " take it 

 altogether, and there is a workman at the head of it, 

 which is everything. As a horseman and a coachman 

 Peyton has not met his equal. And is not old Jem 

 capital, with his broad-brimmed hat and copper-coloured 

 weather-beaten mug and his lingo? No person could 

 mistake his calling ; and how quaintly, yet to the purpose, 

 does he express himself on all subjects on which he speaks ! 

 He has been an excellent servant to Costar, and is highly 

 respected on the road. 1 Have you enjoyed yourself to- 

 day, Edmonston?" 



" It would have been impossible not to have done so," 

 replied his Lordship. "In the first place, it was one of 

 the finest mornings I ever saw in my life, and I delight in 

 a fine spring morning above all things. I always think 

 that the same animal pleasure which makes the bird sing, 

 rises sensibly in the heart of man." 



" Give me a November morning," interrupted Somerby, 

 " and music of another sort than the chirping of birds and 

 bleating of lambs. This is all very well for your pastoral 

 poets to sing about ; but, as Forrest says, there is no such 

 melody to the ear of a sportsman, with a good stud of 

 hunters in his stable, as the clinking of women's pattens 

 in the Melton streets on a dark night in December." 



" Every man to his taste," resumed Lord Edmonston ; 

 " all these things are very well in their way, if not carried 

 too far. I see no objection, for example, to a gentleman 

 driving his own coach, provided he do not lose caste by 

 transforming himself into a coachman. But, I repeat, the 

 love of the pursuit does not admit of his going to extremes. 

 We debase ourselves by imitating servants in the first 

 place ; and, in the next, by exalting them to something 



1 It is to be lamented that there is no print in existence of this 

 thorough-bred coachman, who was the beau-ideal of his calling. 



