‘I never liked that man on Darvell’s farm,’ said the archdeacon.

‘Nor I either,’ said Flurry.  ’No farmer ought to be on that land who don’t have a horse of his own.  And if I war Squire Thorne, I wouldn’t have no farmer there who didn’t keep no horse.  When a farmer has a horse of his own, and follies the hounds, there ain’t no rabbit-traps;—­never.  How does that come about, Mr Henry?  Rabbits!  I know very well what rabbits is!’

Mr Henry shook his head, and turned away, and the archdeacon followed him.  There was an hypocrisy about this pretended care for the foxes which displeased the major.  He could not, of course, tell his father that the foxes were no longer anything to him; but yet he must make it understood that such was his conviction.  His mother had written to him, saying that the sale of the furniture need not take place.  It might be all very well for his mother to say that, or for his father; but after what had taken place, he could consent to remain in England on no other understanding than that his income should be made permanent to him.  Such permanence must not be any longer dependent on his father’s caprice.  In these days he had come to be somewhat in love with poverty and Pau, and had been feeding on the luxury of his grievance.  There, perhaps, nothing so pleasant as the preparation for self-sacrifice.  To give up Cosby Lodge and the foxes, to marry a penniless wife, and to go and live at Pau on six or seven hundred a year, seemed just now to Major Grantly to be a fine thing, and he did not intend to abandon this fine thing without receiving a very clear reason for doing so.  ’I can’t quite understand Thorne,’ said the archdeacon.  ’He used to be so particular about these foxes, and I don’t suppose that a country gentleman will change his ideas because he has given up hunting himself.’

‘Mr Thorne never thought very much of Flurry,’ said Henry Grantly, with his mind intent upon Pau and his grievance.

‘He might take my word, at any rate,’ said the archdeacon.

It was a known fact that the archdeacon’s solicitude about the Plumstead covers was wholly on behalf of his son the major.  The major himself knew this thoroughly, and felt that his father’s present special anxiety was intended as a corroboration of the tidings conveyed in his mother’s letter.  Every word so uttered was meant to have reference to his son’s future residence in the country.  ‘Father,’ he said, turning round shortly, and standing before the archdeacon in the pathway, ’I think you are quite right about the covers.  I feel sure that every gentleman who preserves a fox does good to the country.  I am sorry that I shall not have a closer interest in the matter myself.’

‘Why shouldn’t you have a closer interest in it?’ said the archdeacon.

‘Because I shall be living abroad.’

‘You got your mother’s letter?’

‘Yes, I got my mother’s letter.’

‘Did she not tell you that you can stay where you are?’