The idea once having taken possession of our friend’s mind, soon found itself cramped for room in that somewhat circumscribed area. All dinner-time he was absent and preoccupied; even Scotch broth, a beef-steak pudding, a damson tart, and toasted cheese, did not tend to settle him. Two of the Laranagas were converted into smoke and ashes before he could come to anything like a definite conclusion. Though a temperate man habitually (for the sake of his nerves), he rang for the old brandy labelled V.O.P., and mixed himself a real stiff one, with boiling water and one lump of sugar. I have my suspicions that his final decision was partly its result. The great difficulty was where to go. A man of limited acquaintance and reserved manners has at least this advantage—that all parts of England are equally attractive as regards society. Then he had hunted too much to believe newspaper accounts of sport, so that looking up the old files of _Bell’s Life_ assisted him no whit to a conclusion; also being of an inquiring turn of mind, wherever fox-hunting was concerned, he had amassed such a quantity of information concerning the “flying countries,” that it took him a considerable time and another glass of brandy-and-water to digest and classify his facts. Altogether it was a complicated and puzzling question. First he thought of Leamington and the Warwickshire North and South, with regular attendance on the Atherstone and one field-day per week with the Pytchley; but many considerations combined to render the Spa ineligible as his head-quarters. In the first place, the evening gaieties made his hair stand on end. Since his rejection by Miss Mexico, Sawyer was no dancing man; and indeed even in the first flush of his courtship he was seen to less advantage in a white neckcloth than a blue bird’s-eye. Some men’s hands and feet are not made to fit boots and gloves as constructed by our neighbour the fiery Gaul, and for such it is wise to abstain from “the mazy,” and to rest their hopes of success on other and more sterling qualities than the vapid demeanour and cool assurance which triumph in a ball-room. Then, with all his fondness for the applause of his fellow-creatures, he did not quite fancy making _one_ of that crowd of irregular-horse who appear on a Wednesday at Crick or Misterton, to the unspeakable dismay of the Pytchley _lady_ pack, who, if there is anything _like_ a scent, scour away from them as if for their very lives; and although it is doubtless a high compliment that two hundred gentlemen in scarlet should patronise the same establishment, Mr. Sawyer thought that as far as _he_ was concerned, the number might as well stop at one hundred and ninety-nine.