FKANK, MY PROTECTOR. 7 



entirely trusted to my own keeping, and if I 

 ever hoped for leave of absence from home, I 

 must first find myself a stalwart friend and 

 companion, to cheer me in my privations and 

 insert his burly person between me and all 

 possible danger. Brother sportsmen! if I 

 confide to you that the premier of that parlia- 

 ment of dames was my much-dreaded wife, 

 you will not wonder that I submitted at once 

 to its decree, and m the shortest possible time 

 produced my friend — a sturdy, cheery-looking 

 sportsman from a neighbouring hunt — whose 

 ruddy countenance seemed to repudiate the 

 possibility of low spirits, and whose digestion 

 has been described by one who had been 

 sharing with him the early rising pleasures 

 of ' cubbing ' in September as never so fit 

 as when it commenced its day's work with a 

 couple of large green apples and a short black 

 pipe, between five and six in the morning. 

 Alas that there ever should be a place where 



