‘White Surrey is saddled for the field,’ replied Mr. Orlando Bugles, drawing himself up pompously, and waving his right hand gracefully towards her ladyship’s Arab palfrey, inwardly congratulating himself that Miss Glitters was going to be bumped upon it instead of him.

‘Give us a leg up, Seedey!’ exclaimed Lucy Glitters to the ‘gent’ of the green coat, fearing that Miss Howard, who was a little behind, might claim the horse.

[Illustration:  MR. BUGLES GOES OUT HUNTING AGAIN]

Captain Seedeybuck seized her pretty little uplifted foot and vaulted her into the saddle as light as a cork.  Taking the horse gently by the mouth, she gave him the slightest possible touch with the whip, and moved him about at will, instead of fretting and fighting him as the clumsy, heavy-handed Bugles had done.  She looked beautiful on horseback, and for a time riveted the attention of our sportsmen.  At length they began to think of themselves, and then there were such climbings on, and clutchings, and catchings, and clingings, and gently-ings, and who-ho-ings, and who-ah-ings, and questionings if ‘such a horse was quiet?’ if another ‘could leap well?’ if a third ‘had a good mouth?’ and whether a fourth ‘ever ran away?’

’Take my port-stirrup up two ‘oles!’ exclaimed Captain Bouncey from the top of high Hop-the-twig, sticking out a leg to let the groom do it.

The captain had affected the sea instead of the land service, while a betting-list keeper, and found the bluff sailor character very taking.

‘Avast there!’ exclaimed he, as the groom ran the buckle up to the desired hole.  ‘Now,’ said he, gathering up the reins in a bunch, ’how many knots an hour can this ‘orse go?’

‘Twenty,’ replied the man, thinking he meant miles.

‘Let her go, then!’ exclaimed the captain, kicking the horse’s sides with his spurless heels.

Mr. Watchorn now mounted Harkaway; Sir Harry scrambled on to Hit-me-hard; Miss Howard was hoisted on to Groggytoes, and all the rest being ‘fit’ with horses of some sort or other, and the races in the front being over the juveniles poured into the yard.  Lady Scattercash’s pony-phaeton turned out, and our friends were at length ready for a start.

CHAPTER LXV

THE HUNT

While the foregoing arrangements were in progress, Mr. Watchorn had desired Slarkey, the knife-boy, to go into the old hay-loft and take the three-legged fox he would find, and put him down among the laurels by the summer-house, where he would draw up to him all ‘reg’lar’ like.  Accordingly, Slarkey went, but the old cripple having mounted the rafters, Slarkey didn’t see him, or rather seeing but one fox, he clutched him, with a greater regard to his not biting him than to seeing how many legs he had; consequently he bagged an uncommonly fine old dog fox, that Wiley Tom had just stolen from Lord Scamperdale’s new cover at Faggotfurze; and it was not until Slarkey put him down among the bushes, and saw how lively he went, that he found out his mistake.  However, there was no help for it, and he had just time to pocket the bag when Watchorn’s half-drunken cheer, and the reverberating cracks of ponderous whips on either side of the Dean, announced the approach of the pack.