Mr. Masters did give his clerk leave for three days, and did advance him the required money.  And when he suggested in a whisper that perhaps the circumstance need not be mentioned to Mrs. Masters, Nickem winked again and put his fore-finger to the side of his big carbuncled nose.

That evening Larry Twentyman came in, but was not received with any great favour by Mrs. Masters.  There was growing up at this moment in Dillsborough the bitterness of real warfare between the friends and enemies of sport in general, and Mrs. Masters was ranking herself thereby among the enemies.  Larry was of course one of the friends.  But unhappily there was a slight difference of sentiment even in Larry’s own house, and on this very morning old Mrs. Twentyman had expressed to Mrs. Masters a feeling of wrong which had gradually risen from the annual demolition of her pet broods of turkeys.  She declared that for the last three years every turkey poult had gone, and that at last she was beginning to feel it.  “It’s over a hundred of ’em they’ve had, and it is wearing,” said the old woman.  Larry had twenty times begged her to give up the rearing turkeys, but her heart had been too high for that.  “I don’t know why Lord Rufford’s foxes are to be thought of always, and nobody is to think about your poor mother’s poultry,” said Mrs. Masters, lugging the subject in neck and heels.

“Has she been talking to you, Mrs. Masters, about her turkeys?”

“Your mother may speak to me I suppose if she likes it, without offence to Lord Rufford.”

“Lord Rufford has got nothing to do with it”

“The wood belongs to him,” said Mrs. Masters.

“Foxes are much better than turkeys anyway,” said Kate Masters.

“If you don’t hold your tongue, miss, you’ll be sent to bed.  The wood belongs to his lordship, and the foxes are a nuisance.”

“He keeps the foxes for the county, and where would the county be without them?” began Larry.  “What is it brings money into such a place as this?”

“To Runciman’s stables and Harry Stubbings and the like of them.  What money does it bring in to steady honest people?”

“Look at all the grooms,” said Larry.

“The impudentest set of young vipers about the place,” said the lady.

“Look at Grice’s business.”  Grice was the saddler.

“Grice indeed!  What’s Grice?”

“And the price of horses?”

“Yes;—­making everything dear that ought to be cheap.  I don’t see and I never shall see and I never will see any good in extravagant idleness.  As for Kate she shall never go out hunting again.  She has torn Mary’s habit to pieces.  And shooting is worse.  Why is a man to have a flock of voracious cormorants come down upon his corn fields?  I’m The American Senator, all in favour of Goarly, and so, I tell you, Mr. Twentyman.”  After this poor Larry went away, finding that he had no opportunity for saying a word to Mary Masters.