40 SKETCHES IN THE HUNTING FIEID. 



you, and make you comfortable in a chair by the side of 

 the capacious fireplace, where the flames of a roaring 

 fire gleam on various incidents of Scripture history 

 delineated in blue and white tiles. Tom has no 

 drawing-room or dining-room, and sits here when he 

 is not in his business room, somewhat laboriously con- 

 ducting his correspondence, or making up his accounts. 

 The girls have their sitting-room upstairs, inside the 

 lattice-window with diamond panes, about which 

 creepers cluster so richly in the summer ; but they will 

 come down to do honour to their father's guest. 



Declining port and sherry, for Tom's taste runs 

 rather in the direction of heady beverages, and ex- 

 plaining the impossibility of consuming roast beef, a 

 quantity of turkey, and a small mountain of brawn, 

 when you are going to dine in a couple of hours, you 

 will do well to accept, even in preference to the ale, a 

 cup of tea with the rich cream, the originators of which 

 are lowing as they pass through the farmyard. Such 

 bread and butter, too, as Bessie Maizeley cuts for you is 

 not to be had every day of the year. 



Then, while a substantial meal is in course of pre- 

 paration for Tom and his son, who has followed in after 

 seeing to the horses, you have just time for a cigarette 

 while Tom has a whiff at his churchwarden, the only 

 way in which he can take his tobacco with a relish, and 

 he will explain to you once more how it came that the 

 old mare — a present, by the way, from Sir Henry 

 Akerton, his tyrannical landlord — just failed to win the 



