one wore a paste brooch in her tie and
the other had an imitation cavalry bit and bridle, with a leather tassel
hanging from her pony's throat, these things lost their savour when she
had no one with whom to make merry over them. She had left her
sandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant had mistaken whisky for sherry
when he was filling her flask; the day had clouded over, and already one
brief but furious shower had scourged the curl out of her dark fringe
and made the reins slippery.

At last, however, a nice-looking gorse covert was reached, and the
hounds threw themselves into it with promising alacrity. Pilot steadied
himself, and stood with pricked ears, giving an occasional snatch at his
bit, and looking, as no one knew better than his rider, the very picture
of a hunter, while he listened for the first note that should tell of a
find. He had not long to wait. There came a thin little squeal from the
middle of the covert, and a hound flung up out of the thicker gorse and
began to run along a ridge of rock, with head down, and feathering
stern.

"They've got him, my lady," said a young farmer on a rough
three-year-old to Mrs. Pat, as he stuffed his pipe in his pocket.
"That's Patience; we'll have a hunt out o' this."

Then came another and longer squeal as Patience plunged out of sight
again, and then, as the glowing chorus rose from the half-seen pack, a
whip, posted on a hillside beyond the covert, raised his cap high in the
air, and a wild screech that set Pilot dancing from leg to leg broke
from a country boy who was driving a harrow in the next field: "Ga--aane
awa--ay!"

Mrs. Pat forgot her annoyances. Her time had come. She would show that
idiot Booth that Pilot was not to be insulted with impunity, and--But
here retrospect and intention became alike merged in the present, and in
the single resolve to get ahead and stay there. Half a dozen of Pilot's
great reaching strides, and she was in the next field and over the low
bank without putting an iron on it. The horse with the harrow, deserted
by his driver, was following the hunt with the best of them, and,
combining business with pleasure, was, as he went, harrowing the field
with absurd energy. The Paste Brooch and the Shelburne Porter--so Mrs.
Pat mentally distinguished them--were sailing along with a good start,
and Major Booth was close at their heels. The light soil of the tilled
field flew in every direction as thirty or more horses raced across it