MOTHER HUNT 127 



ferreting and there was a miserable little boy to carry the rabbits. 

 The farmer was very particular, counting the rabbits as they were 

 shot. At the end of the day Snipey was in a great hurry to get off, 

 and said, " Jump in, or we shall be late." " Hold hard," said the 

 farmer, " there's only thirty-four rabbits here and we killed thirty- 

 six." A discussion ensued, the guns agreeing to the bag. " Where 

 are the other two?" said the farmer to Snipey. "How should I 

 know ? " he replied. " But you keep your eye on that boy, he's an 

 artful young stink." 



In pulling off the gun cases at Cambridge the rolled horse cloth 

 came down and out fell two rabbits. "How did the rabbits get 

 there ? " said Wright. " Well, it is a mystery," said Snipey, " but my 

 old woman said in bed last night, ' I have just dreamed we were 

 having boiled rabbit for dinner,' and I expect that dream will 

 come true." 



No. 3 



Six of us banded together to hire a day's cover shooting at 

 Saffron Walden, and drove over in a waggonette and pair with 

 Snipey. Many amusing things took place, but after lunch we were 

 walking some low scrub and a rabbit went back. Ivo Bligh shot at 

 it, and from behind a bush about fifty yards off, well in the line of 

 fire, sprang Snipey into the air with a wild yell and his trousers 

 round his ankles — he had stopped behind without telling any one. 

 We rushed up, and Bligh said, "Are you hurt?" "Well, you 

 rattled up my old buckskins a bit, but they are pretty tough and it 

 don't matter. Honourable," as he called Bligh. We paid Snipey and 

 Lawrence, the dog man, thirty shillings a head for our shoot, and 

 afterwards found out it was an outlying cover of the Essex Union 

 Hunt, and they had taken our money and let us shoot what didn't 

 belong to them. 



One day last season (in February 1911) a sportsman came out to 

 the Trinity Backs meet mounted on Eeuben, a grey cob of Hopkins, 

 who (the sportsman, not Pieuben) turned out to be father of a beagling 

 undergraduate, and himself a beagler of Mother Hunt's time. He 

 was up for some time, and spent a fair amount of it at The Pitt, 



