‘That’s a niceish nag you gave Frank this morning,’ he said to his uncle.  ’I was looking at him before dinner.  He is a Monsoon, isn’t he?’

‘Well I can’t say I know how he was bred,’ said the squire.  ’He shows a good deal of breeding.’

‘He’s a Monsoon, I’m sure,’ said the Honourable John.  ’They’ve all those ears, and that peculiar dip in the back.  I suppose you gave a goodish figure for him?’

‘Not so very much,’ said the squire.

‘He’s a trained hunter, I suppose?’

‘If not, he soon will be,’ said the squire.

‘Let Frank alone for that,’ said Harry Baker.

‘He jumps beautifully, sir,’ said Frank.  ’I haven’t tried him myself, but Peter made him go over the bar two or three times this morning.’

The Honourable John was determined to give his cousin a helping hand, as he considered it.  He thought that Frank was very ill used in being put off with so incomplete stud, and thinking also that the son had not spirit enough to attack his father himself on the subject, the Honourable John determined to do it for him.

’He’s the making of a very nice horse, I don’t doubt.  I wish you had a string like him, Frank.’

Frank felt the blood rush to his face.  He would not for worlds have his father think that he was discontented, or otherwise than pleased with the present he had received that morning.  He was heartily ashamed of himself in that he had listened with a certain degree of complacency to his cousin’s tempting; but he had no idea that the subject would be repeated—­and then repeated, too, before his father, in a manner to vex him on such a day as this, before such people as were assembled here.  He was very angry with his cousin, and for a moment forgot all his hereditary respect for a De Courcy.

‘I tell you what, John,’ said he, ’do you choose your day, some day early in the season, and come out on the best thing you have, and I’ll bring, not the black horse, but my old mare; and then do you try to keep near me.  If I don’t leave you at the back of God-speed before long, I’ll give you the mare and the horse too.’

The Honourable John was not known in Barsetshire as one of the most forward of its riders.  He was a man much addicted to hunting, as far as the get-up of the thing was concerned; he was great in boots and breeches; wondrously conversant with bits and bridles; he had quite a collection of saddles; and patronized every newest invention for carrying spare shoes, sandwiches, and flasks of sherry.  He was prominent at the cover side;—­some people, including the master of hounds, thought him perhaps a little too loudly prominent; he affected a familiarity with the dogs, and was on speaking acquaintance with every man’s horse.  But when the work was cut out, when the pace began to be sharp, when it behoved a man either to ride or visibly to decline to ride, then—­so at least said they who had not the De Courcy interest quite closely at heart—­then, in those heart-stirring moments, the Honourable John was too often found deficient.