400 THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



word surely as appropriate as the Laureate's familiar adjective), 

 are an index of the agony within. His physical sufferings bear 

 upon "a mind unhinged;" and his thoughts revert to every 

 calamity that has affected him in the recent past or may come 

 upon him in the possible future. Broker wrote this morning 

 that the good thing in American Railways has already dropped 

 him enough to have paid all the winter cornbills. Groom had 

 a gruesome story at starting of Best-and-Bravest's backsinew 

 having " altogether gone this time." Again, he knows the 

 only bad-shouldered brute in the stable has been sent on this 

 morning — and it's a dreadful comitry for stiff timber. Oh, how 

 the old collar-bone does ache to-day ! His toes feel as if they 

 were under the wheel of that passing waggon — and the very 

 thought makes him cringe to his marrow. " You must get out 

 and open the gate, my dear ! " John has gone on with Missis' 

 horse ; and, ulster and silk apron nevertheless, poor Benedict 

 has to scramble up and down the muddy wheel. " Why the 

 deuce doesn't old Skinflint fence his field, and do away with 

 the epithet gates? There now, you've gone on just as I was 

 getting in ! I think you mifiht have held the brute properl3\ 

 I've got my thinnest boots on, and you've dropped me right 

 into a puddle ! Really " And with all his natural ill- 

 temper fully aroused, Benedict ferox at length reaches his 

 saddle, to find that his second-horseman has done everything 

 he should not, and has carefully forgotten to do all that he 

 should. Having vented his feelings volubly on the scapegoat 

 (who, however, is quite used to the office of safety-valve, and 

 performs it with perfect equanimity), B. moves on, trying hard 

 to wreathe his countenance in its customary beaming smile — 

 the while he feels injured, miserable, chilled, and in a funk. 

 No, the Sybaritical luxury of a brougham is the only mode of 

 comfort on wheels : though, as long as we are on the right side 

 of sixty, a galloping hack gives more pleasure than even the 

 morning paper and a cigarette. Yet there is one state of 

 things imder which it would not only be excusable, but sensible, 

 to show a preference the other way — I mean a morning of fog 



