over too; and having cursed the
natives for barbarians, because there was not a pack of harriers within
ten miles, which confirmed him in the opinion he had always expressed of
their utter want of civilisation (for, as he justly remarked, not one in
a dozen could even speak decent English), he waited impatiently for
September, when he had got leave from some Mr Williams or Jones--I never
remembered which--to shoot over a considerable range about Glyndewi.

But with the 20th of August a change came o'er the spirit of our dream.
Hitherto we had seen little of any of the neighbouring families,
excepting that of a Captain George Phillips, who, living only three
miles off, on the bank of the river, and having three sons and two
daughters, and keeping a pretty yacht, had given us a dinner-party
or two, and a pleasant day's sail. Capital fellows were the young
Phillipses: Nature's gentlemen; unsophisticated, hearty Welshmen; lads
from sixteen to twenty. Down they used to come in a most dangerous
little craft of their own, which went by the name of the "Coroner's
Inquest," to smoke cigars, (against which the Captain had published an
interdict at home), and question us about Oxford larks, and tell us in
return stories of wild-fowl shooting, otter-hunting, and salmon-fishing,
in all which they were proficient.

Our establishment was not an imposing one, but of them we made no
strangers. Once they came, I remember, self-invited to dinner, in a most
unfortunate state of our larder. The weekly half sheep had not arrived
from B----; to get anything in Glyndewi, beyond the native luxuries of
bacon and herrings, was hopeless; and our dinner happened to be a leash
of fowls, of which we had just purchased a live supply. Mrs Glasse would
have been in despair; we took it coolly; to the three boiled fowls at
top, we added three roast ditto at bottom, and by unanimous consent of
both guests and entertainers, a more excellent dinner was never put on
table.

But the 20th of August the day of the Glyndewi regatta!--_that_ must
have a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER II.

When a dull place like Glyndewi does undertake to be gay, it seldom does
things by halves. Ordinary doses of excitement fail to meet the urgency
of the case. It was the fashion, it appeared, for all the country
families of any pretensions to _ton_, and not a few of the idlers from
the neighbouring watering-places, to be at Glyndewi for the race-week.
And as far as the progr