And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-side comes
out--a market cart or two; men in smock-frocks going to their work, pipe
in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell this bright morning. The sun
gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds
jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's back,
whose face is about the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he
exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a
lodge, and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case
and carpet-bag, An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather
up their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the
elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind
if necessary. And here comes breakfast.
"Twenty minutes here, gentlemen," says the coachman, as they pull up at
half-past seven at the inn-door.
Have we not endured nobly this morning? and is not this a worthy reward
for much endurance? There is the low, dark wainscoted room hung with
sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it
belonging to bagmen who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing
fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck
a large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county
hounds; the table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and
bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth
ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher.
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