4o8 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



He is spared to us for many a year, I trust. And the hovel 

 has ah-eady been pierced for windows. 



Saturday, January 19, i t. 15.— Advertisement, 10,45; 

 law, thirty minutes ; and the Master moved into Badby 

 wood almost unaccompanied. Reynard was punctual, 

 but played handsomely into the hands of the ball-goers. 

 Not a minute before 11.30 would he budge; and then 

 only because i8| couple of ladies, who had gone to bed 

 in good time, were screaming at him for an extra. 

 With the music at double time he took the glassy floor of 

 Arbury and Studborough Hill, kept just within the con- 

 fines of the Pytchley Hunt, sheered away from the 

 Bicester covert of Dane Hole, and circled round to 

 Staverton, scent and mirth improving momentarily, though 

 the easiest of fences were horribly jarring. I am often 

 glad I am not a horse (all obvious and odious comparison 

 barred hereby at pistol-point), but I think I would rather 

 be driven in a hansom cab with blinkers on, with a fair 

 freight behind me and all, than be asked to land down a 

 drop on Studborough hillside, with seventeen stone losing 

 his balance as I slipped, and me expected to recover us 

 both. Yet it was done ; and I expect that horse, fresh 

 and ready on his feet as ever, to the far front in three 

 days, an immediate dissolution of Parliament alone for- 

 bidding. Next moment (now this may lead me into 

 trouble) I saw three fair dames — no, one was a damsel — 

 exemplifying exactly the (how shall I express it ?) below- 

 medium of balance that ought to prevent their election to 

 anything higher than, say. Poor Law Guardians. They 

 took it in turn to pierce the very blackest and most 

 disparaging of bullfinches that ever unfitted a woman 

 for a ball-room. Not one of them had a veil when 

 she came out. And they lit, after long interval, upon 

 skating-ground half a foot deep in snow. Not satisfied 

 with this, two-thirds of the party later in the day varied 

 their mode of proceeding by sweeping downhill over a 

 double post-and-rails to descend upon a similar carpet. 

 Now, none of these belong to the order of New Women ; 

 but, by all that is fitting in life, they will want a very new 

 order of men to follow them. Personally, I have sent in 



