“A man from the Department of Agriculture came down into our section to look over farms and give advice to farmers.  He went to see one farmer in my county and found that he had absolutely nothing growing, and that his livestock consisted of three hunters and thirty-two couples of hounds.  The agricultural expert was scandalized.  He told the farmer he ought to begin at once to raise hogs.  ’You can feed them what you feed the dogs,’ he said, ’and have good meat for your family aside from what you sell.’

“After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country and spat ruminatively.

“‘I ain’t never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,’ he said, and with that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as closed.  Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed fox hunting with the remark that a fox was ’damned hard to catch and no good when you got him.’”

CHAPTER XVII

“A CERTAIN PARTY”

    Kind are her answers,
    But her performance keeps no day;
    Breaks time, as dancers
    From their own music when they stray.

    Lost is our freedom
    When we submit to women so: 
    Why do we need ’em
    When, in their best, they work our woe?

    —­THOMAS CAMPION.

The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one.  I remember that we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost stuck.  Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races.  All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.

Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the railroad station only to find that the train was late.  I had a magazine in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my companion—­and another companion much more beautiful.

I tried to picture her as she would look.  She would be in evening dress, of course.  After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink, and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew.  You know the sort of gown I mean:  one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by