Meanwhile Hotspur makes himself profoundly ridiculous, pushing the gate when the latch is down, and wincing from it when he ought to shove; also finding himself totally unassisted by the crook of his master’s whip, which keeps slipping on the wet green wood, waxes irritable, rears up, and threatens to vary the entertainment, by performing a somersault into the next field.
“Let me do it for you, sir,” says a good-natured young farmer; and Mr. Sawyer wisely abandons his office of doorkeeper, and after about forty people have hustled by him, manages at last to edge his way through.
By this time the hounds have been put into the gorse. Nineteen couple are they of _ladies_, with the cleanest of heads and necks, straight and fair on their legs and feet as so many ballet-dancers, and owning that keen wistful look, which is so peculiar to the countenance of the fox-hound. They dash into the covert as if sure of finding, and Parson Dove, standing erect in his stirrups, watches them with a glow of pleasure lighting up his clean-shaved face. “There’s a fox, Charles, I’ll lay a bishopric!” says he, and a whimper from Truelove confirms the parson’s opinion on the spot.
“Not a doubt on it! sir, not a doubt on it! one if not a brace!” replies that functionary, with immense rapidity. He loses very little time indeed, at his phrases, or his fences, or anything else. In another moment he is up to his girths in the gorse, cheering on the beauties, who are working up the scent with a vast deal of musical energy. The master casts an uneasy glance at the crowd; countless anxieties and apprehensions cross his mind. One way the fox will be headed, another the hounds will be cut off, a third leads up to the village, and we all know how fatal are houses and pigsties at the commencement of a run. But the fourth side is clear; happily the hounds are even now bustling eagerly towards it.
Diverse occupations engross the attention of the field; few of them seem to be much taken up with the business in hand. Here a gentleman is giving a farmer’s horse a gallop, preparatory, as it would appear, to a purchase. There another is detailing the last news from Warwickshire, to an applauding audience. Struggles, on his feet, is adjusting a snaffle-bridle more comfortably on the head of a game little thorough-bred. Savage is discussing the merits of a new novel with a literary friend. Major Brush is taking up a link in Miss Dove’s curb-chain; that damsel, very killing indeed, in a little hat and feathers, is surrounded by admirers, and yet, _lassata, nondum satiata_, is inwardly regretting that she had snubbed poor Mr. Sawyer so gratuitously at the meet. You see, however low one may rate the value of his vassalage, still a victim always counts _for one_; and it is a pity needlessly to throw away the veriest weed that helps to make up one’s chaplet. Truth to tell, Mr. Sawyer was not thinking about her. He had crept on, as he thought, unobserved, to a place from which he could command the proceedings, and try to get a good start. Nevertheless, a watchful eye was on his movements. The master was even then deliberating whether he should holloa to him to “Come back, sir,” and was hoping in his own mind, “that chap in a cap wouldn’t go on, and head the fox!”