1881-82.] TRIFLES. 399 



** Three white frosts and rain." So it was, when Monday, 

 Dec. 19, opened with a cold steady downpour. Cossington 

 Gorse, with the wind in the north-east, seemed, however, a 

 fair enough prospect. The recent touch of frost had brought 

 it vividly before men's minds that Christmas was not far off, 

 and that the weather might at any moment adopt the role of 

 " seasonable." They were keen as the air, and hungry as 

 winter wolves. Ratclifi'e is so far removed from all that is not 

 purely Quornite that the field is almost entirely confined to 

 the Hunt, and is quite diminutive as compared with that of a 

 Friday jubilee. The latter runs into a quarter of a thousand 

 as an ordinary thing ; and, as occasion demands, or the season 

 goes on, frequently attains to double that size. To-day — an 

 ante-Christmas Monday — was a marked and pleasant con- 

 trast, as I can show from personal observation. Arriving at 

 the covert-side quite as late as a careful man should do, the 

 gay procession filed across me ; and, headed by the staft', passed 

 along the road on its way to Cossington Gorse. Thus, while 

 trotting up, I had the opportunity of counting off its numbers 

 to a nicety ; and the whole party, including every second 

 horseman and every mounted man and woman in sight, did 

 not exceed seventy. Very cheering the bright-coloured cortege 

 looked, this dull cold morning. There was no rain now ; 

 waterproofs had been cast off, or carriages just forsaken, and 

 the butterflies were airing their fresh untarnished feathers. 

 Closer inspection, however, found anything but gaiety depicted 

 on the faces of those who had lightened their day's work by 

 driving to the meet in open carriages. Some people, well- 

 fleshed and warm-blooded, carry a store of caloric in their 

 veins, that makes them proof against the chiUiest blast. But 

 to an ordinary mortal — still more to one of extra length and 

 sparer built — a drive to covert on a box-seat, the wind from 

 the north and the thermometer low in the thirties, is absolute 

 and unconquerable misery. His blood seems to cease its course ; 

 his limbs dry up ; and his ribs seem to open to the wind. 

 His pinched features, blanched or blue, green or tiptinted (a 



