My heart sank as I saw the company pass me gaily down the road, preceded by the hounds, trotting with a staccato step and their noses in the air.

Just as I was turning to go home, a groom rode past in mufti, leading a loose horse with a lady’s saddle on it.  The animal gave a clumsy lurch; and the man, jerking it violently by the head, bumped it into my phaeton.  I saw my chance.

Margot:  “Hullo, man! ...  That’s my horse!  Whose groom are you?”

Man (rather frightened at being caught jobbing his lady’s horse in the mouth):  “I am Mrs. Chaplin’s groom, miss.”

Margot:  “Jump off; you are the very man I was looking for; tell me, does Mrs. Chaplin ride this horse over everything?”

Man (quite unsuspicious and thawing at my sweetness and authority):  “Bless your soul!  Mrs. Chaplin doesn’t ’unt this ’orse!  It’s the Major’s!  She only ’acked it to the meet.”

Margot (apprehensively and her heart sinking):  “But can it jump? ...  Don’t they hunt it?”

Man (pulling down my habit skirt):  “It’s a ’orse that can very near jump anythink, I should say, but the Major says it shakes every tooth in ’is gums and she says it’s pig-’eaded.”

It did not take me long to mount and in a moment I had left the man miles behind me.  Prepared for the worst, but in high glee, I began to look about me:  not a sign of the hunt!  Only odd remnants of the meet, straggling foot-passengers, terriers straining at a strap held by drunken runners—­some in old Beaufort coats, others in corduroy—­one-horse shays of every description by the sides of the road and sloppy girls with stick and tammies standing in gaps of the fences, straining their eyes across the fields to see the hounds.

My horse with a loose rein was trotting aimlessly down the road when, hearing a “Halloa!” I pulled up and saw the hounds streaming towards me all together, so close that you could have covered them with a handkerchief.

What a scent!  What a pack!  Have I headed the fox?  Will they cross the road?  No!  They are turning away from me!  Now’s the moment!!

I circled the Chaplin horse round with great resolution and trotted up to a wall at the side of the road; he leapt it like a stag; we flew over the grass and the next fence; and, after a little scrambling, I found myself in the same field with hounds.  The horse was as rough as the boy said, but a wonderful hunter; it could not put a foot wrong; we had a great gallop over the walls, which only a few of the field saw.

When hounds checked, I was in despair; all sorts of ladies and gentlemen came riding towards me and I wondered painfully which of them would be Mr. and which Mrs. Chaplin.  What was I to do?  Suddenly remembering my new friend and patron, I peered about for the Duke; when I found him and told him of the awkward circumstances in which I had placed myself, he was so much amused that he made my peace with the Chaplins, who begged me to go on riding their horse.  They were not less susceptible to dukes than other people and in any case no one was proof against the old Duke of Beaufort.  At the end of the day I was given the brush—­a fashion completely abandoned in the hunting-field now—­and I went home happy and tired.