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 a 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 there. 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
and keep near me. If I don't leave you at the back of Godspeed 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 patronised 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.

There was, therefore, a considerable laugh at his expense when Frank,
instigated