Part 33 (1/2)
”No. Come along, Norah, there's a splendid stretch of gra.s.s here: let's canter!”
They had agreed upon a Christian-name footing some time before, when it seemed that Hardress was likely to be a permanent member of the household. She looked at him now, as they cantered along through the dew-wet gra.s.s at the side of the road. No one would have guessed at anything wrong with him: he was bronzed and clear-eyed, and sat as easily in the saddle as though he had never been injured.
”Sometimes,” said Norah suddenly, ”I find myself wondering which of your legs is the shop one!” She flushed. ”I suppose I oughtn't to make personal remarks, but your leg does seem family property!”
”So it is,” said Hardress, grinning. ”Anyhow, you couldn't make a nicer personal remark than that one. So I forgive you. But it's all thanks to you people.”
”We couldn't have done anything if you hadn't been determined to get on,” Norah answered. ”As soon as you made up your mind to that--well, you got on.”
”I don't know how you stood me so long,” he muttered. Then they caught up to the riders ahead, and were received by Geoffrey with a joyful shout.
”You were nearly late, Norah,” said Mr. Linton.
”I dragged her from the kitchen, sir,” Hardress said. ”She and Miss de Lisle were poring over food--if we get no dinner to-night it will be our fault.”
”If _you_ had the responsibility of feeding fourteen hungry people you wouldn't make a joke of it,” said Norah. ”It's very solemn, especially when the fishmonger fails you hopelessly.”
”There's always tinned salmon,” suggested her father.
”Tinned salmon, indeed!” Norah's voice was scornful. ”We haven't come yet to giving the Tired People dinner out of a tin. However, it's all right: Miss de Lisle will work some sort of a miracle. I'm not going to think of housekeeping for a whole day!”
The meet was four miles away, near a marshy hollow thickly covered with osiers and willows. A wood fringed the marsh, and covered a hill which rose from a little stream beyond it. Here and there was a glimpse of the yellow flame of gorse. There were rolling fields all round, many of them ploughed: it had not yet been made compulsory for every landowner to till a portion of his holding, but English farmers were beginning to awake to the fact that while the German submarine flourished it would be both prudent and profitable to grow as much food as possible, and the plough had been busy. The gate into the field overlooking the marsh stood open; a few riders were converging towards it from different points. The old days of crowded meets and big fields of riders were gone. Only a few plucky people struggled to keep the hounds going, and to find work for the hunters that had escaped the first requisition of horses for France.
The hounds came into view as Mr. Linton's party arrived. The ”Master”
came first, on a big, workmanlike grey; a tall woman, with a weatherbeaten face surmounted by a bowler hat. The hounds trotted meekly after her, one or another pausing now and then to drink at a wayside puddle before being rebuked for bad manners by a watchful whip. Mrs. Ainslie liked the Lintons; she greeted them pleasantly.
”Nice morning,” she said. ”Congratulations: I hear the boy is a Captain.”
”We can't quite realize it,” Norah said, laughing. ”You see, we hardly knew he had grown up!”
”Well, he grew to a good size,” said Mrs. Ainslie, with a smile.
”Hullo, Geoff. Are you going to follow to-day?”
”They won't let me,” said Geoffrey dolefully. ”I know Brecon and I could, but Mother says we're too small.”
”Too bad!” said Mrs. Ainslie. ”Never mind; you'll be big pretty soon.”
A tall old man in knickerbockers greeted her: Squire Brand, who owned a famous property a few miles away, and who had the reputation of never missing a meet, although he did not ride. He knew every inch of the country; it was said that he could boast, at the end of a season, that he had, on the whole, seen more of the runs than any one else except the Master. He was a tireless runner, with an extraordinarily long stride, which carried him over fields and ditches and gave him the advantage of many a short cut impossible to most people. He knew every hound by name; some said he knew every fox in the country; and he certainly had an amazing knowledge of the direction a fox was likely to take. Horses, on the other hand, bored him hopelessly; he consented to drive them, in the days when motors were not, but merely as a means of getting from place to place. A splendid car, with a chauffeur much smarter than his master, had just dropped him: a grant figure in weatherbeaten Harris tweeds, grasping a heavy stick.
”We should get a good run to-day,” he said.
”Yes--with luck,” Mrs. Ainslie answered.
”Any news from the Colonel?”
”Nothing in particular--plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they had a very sporting time!”
Squire Brand chuckled.
”I don't doubt it,” he said. ”Did he say what they hunted?”
”Anything they could get, apparently. They began with a hare, and then got on to a rabbit, in some mysterious fas.h.i.+on. They finished up with a brisk run in the outskirts of a village, and got a kill--it turned out this time to be a cat!” Mrs. Ainslie's rather grim features relaxed into a smile. ”If any one had told Val two years ago that he would be enthusiastic over a day like that!”