There is no need to attempt to record in detail the comments of the wider circle of Larry’s acquaintances, but it may be said that his friends of all ranks had one point in common, a sincere admiration for Dr. Mangan.  Bill Kirby, who had supported him politically, now fell away from him.  Judith had not refrained from admitting him to the secret which she had extracted from her younger sister, and Bill’s references to young Mr. Coppinger and to Doctor, Mrs., and Miss Mangan, would have been very helpful to those ladies, of whom there were many, who took the matter to heart.

The unpopularity of the engagement was considerably aggravated by the extreme magnificence of the furs, presented by the bridegroom elect to his fiancee, and worn by her at a meet of the hounds, which she attended in her father’s motor.

It might have been some consolation to the neighbourhood had it known that those grey furs had been of the nature of a peace-offering, after a rather acute difference of opinion on that point of settling down at Coppinger’s Court as opposed to going abroad.  Larry had shelved it for the present, and had, as he told himself, made good by the dint of the furs.  That had come out all right, but now, Larry, mounted on Joker, and led in chains at Tishy’s motor-wheel, found that among his former allies of the hunt things were not as they once had been, and was not pleased.  Singularly enough, Judith alone was faithful found among the faithless.  She declared that Larry had been brutally and idiotically treated, and that this engagement was the result, and justified all that she had been saying for many past ages.  When Larry appeared at the Meet, his scalp-lock prominent among Miss Mangan’s furs, Judith alone of his former intimates met him with cordiality, condoled with him over his election defeat with sympathy, and congratulated him on his engagement with decorum.

“I felt it was only decent,” she said later, to the friend to whom she complacently recounted her effort, “after he had been kicked downstairs by Papa, and booted out of the house by Christian, quite without justification.  I congratulated him warmly!  I absolutely rode up to the gorgeous Tishy and said civil things there too!”

“It was perfectly angelic of you!” said the friend.

“Quite the reverse, my dear!” said Judith, proudly.  “But you see Bill has the hounds, and anyhow, I like to prepare for all contingencies!”

For the rest, a chilly neutrality reigned at the Meet.  Larry was finding his official position of captive decidedly irksome.  He wished that Tishy would not call him by his name every time she spoke to him; that she would not speak so loud; that this eternal jog to the covert would end before the Day of Judgment; finally, that he had stayed at home.  He saw the red-headed Cloherty, and, failing more congenial society, joined him.  But the red-headed Cloherty was crosser than any of them, and what the devil was it to him