THE REGULAR TIPS. 19 



go in the way of money slips a sovereign into your fist. 

 There's a deal in the way of giving it too, as perhaps you 

 wouldn't think. Some gents does it as much as to say 

 they're much obliged to you for kindly taking it. Some 

 does it as if they were chucking a bone to a dog. One 

 place where I was, the governor were the haughtiest man 

 as ever you see. When the shooting was done — after a 

 great party, you never knowed whether he were pleased 

 or not — he never took no more notice of you than if you 

 were a tree. But I found him out arter a time or two. 

 You had to walk close behind him, as if you were a spaniel ; 

 and by-and-by he would slip his hand round behind his 

 back — without a word, mind — and you had to take what 

 was in it, and never touch your hat or so much as " Thank 

 you, sir." It were always a five-pound note if the shoot- 

 ing had been good ; but it never seemed to come so sweet 

 as if he'd done it to your face.' 



The keeper gets a goodly number of tips in the course 

 of the year, from visitors at the great house, from natural- 

 ists who come now and then, from the sportsmen, and 

 regularly from the masters of three packs of hounds ; not 

 to mention odd moneys at intervals in various ways, as 

 when he goes round to deliver presents of game to the 

 chief tenants on the estate or to the owner's private friends. 

 Gentlemen who take an interest in such things come out 

 every spring to see the young broods of pheasants — which, 

 indeed, are a pretty sight — and they always leave some- 



