a rushy field, and then indeed did the pent waters of the hunt break forth.  Major Dick’s tall chestnut had gradually increased his lead, and by the time the track was clear of riders, he was two fields ahead, with Cottingham not far behind, and a few indignant young men riding like maniacs to overtake them.  To have been held back by a schoolboy and a little girl is an indignity not easily to be borne.  The Broadwater Vale field was a hard-going one, including a strengthening of young soldiers from the regiment quartered at Riverstown, and it was not long before Tommy and Harry were beginning to find themselves in a more familiar and less exigent position.  Judith, on the grey mare, went by them like a flash; Doctor Mangan overtook them heavily, and heavily passed them.  Father David, riding a little wide of the crowd, waved a friendly hand to Christian, as the black mare, composed and discreet, as became a daughter of the Church, dwelt for an instant on the top of a wide bank, before she struck off into the next field.  Worst indignity of all, Charles, the coachman, on the elderly carriage horse, drew alongside, and presumed to offer directions and admonitions.  “As if,” thought Christian, as she drove Harry at the bank in the wake of the black mare, “I cared a pin what he says!”

Gone for poor Charles were the days when Miss Christian had revered him above all other created things; days such as the one on which, after a ride round the yard on an unharnessed carriage horse, Christian, in gratitude too great for words, had attempted to kiss him.  Charles had repelled the embrace, saying tactfully:  “No pleasures in Lent, Miss!” and Christian had accepted the excuse.  Then Miss Christian had been three years old, now she was thirteen, and Charles had, in the interval, married a cook, and lost his figure, and with it, had departed his nerve, and the reverance of Miss Christian, and he knew it.

Close behind Charles came Dr. Mangan’s “little girl,” who had been confided with a lubricating half-crown, to his care.  Miss Letitia Mangan was far from considering herself a little girl.  She was sixteen and a half, and conceived herself to be of combatant rank, even though her thick, dark hair banged on her back in a ponderous pigtail, and her education at the Cluhir Convent School was still uncompleted.  The fat, piebald pony that she was riding would have a sore back before she got home.  Christian, perched wren-like on her ancient steed (but a wren placed with mathematical accuracy of directness with relation to the steed’s ears), noted with disfavour the crooked seat, the heavy hand on the curb.  Larry, hot and pink, with hat hanging by its guard, his fair hair looking like storm-tossed corn-stooks, noted nothing, being wholly engrossed in bitter conflict with Tommy.  The art of keeping a good start with hounds is not given to many, and least of all to the young and inexperienced.  From having been first of the first, it had fallen to Larry and Christian to find themselves last, and last in the despised company of Charles and “the Mangan girl.”