V. 



A STRAIGHT RIDER. 



The Dowager Lady Hortington, sitting in her barouche 

 at the Cross Roads on the occasion of a meet at that 

 likely centre, and holding her gold-framed eye-glasses 

 to her aquiline nose, surveys us with the sort of expres- 

 sion she might be expected to assume on suddenly 

 coming upon a herd of harmless but eccentric animals ; 

 and presently her ladyship desires to be informed who 

 is the boy on the large brown horse. 



Sir Henry Akerton, who is on his horse at the side ot 

 the Hortington barouche, talking to its occupant, looks 

 in the direction indicated. 



Seated on a great raking thoroughbred bay — it is not 

 a brown, but the dowager scorns details — is a youth 

 with mild blue eyes set in a smooth, rosy, and guileless 

 countenance, decorated only by a faint and downy 

 moustache, and now w^earing such a weary and melan- 

 choly aspect that we who know him well understand 

 that he is peculiarly happy and alert this morning. 



Kitty Trewson, dashing up in her most approved 

 style, passes immediately behind the bay's tail — a 

 proceeding which he accepts as an insult, and a furious 



