of
Titmouse very quietly--her father's first gift, the pony that had
carried her when she was a seven-year-old huntress with tawny hair
flowing loose under her little velvet _toque_. She gave no expression
to her indignation at the sale of this old favourite, as she had done
in the case of Bullfinch. If she wept for him, her tears were shed in
secret. She took the sale of her pet almost as a matter of course.

"The Captain thinks we have too many horses and ponies, dear; and you
know dear papa was a little extravagant about his stables," said her
mother apologetically, when she announced the fate of Titmouse; "but of
course Arion will always be kept for you."

"I am glad of that, mamma," Vixen answered gravely. "I should be sorry
to part with the last horse papa gave me as well as with the first."

To the Captain himself Vixen said no word about her pony, and he made
no apology for or explanation of his conduct, He acted as if Heaven had
made him lord of the Abbey House and all its belongings in his cradle,
and as if his wife and her daughter were accidental and subordinate
figures in the scene of his life.

Despite the era of retrenchment which the new master had inaugurated,
things at the Abbey House had never been done with so much dignity and
good style. There had been a slipshod ease, an old-fashioned liberality
in the housekeeping during the Squire's reign, which had in some
measure approximated to the popular idea of an Irish household. Now all
was done by line and rule, and according to the latest standard of
perfection. There was no new fashion in Belgravia--from a brand of
champagne to the shape of a menu-holder--which Captain Winstanley had
not at his finger's ends. The old-style expensive heavy dinners at the
Abbey House: the monster salmon under whose weight the serving man
staggered; the sprawling gigantic turbot, arabesqued with sliced lemon
and barberries; the prize turkey, too big for anything but a poultry
show; these leviathans and megatheria of the market were seen no more.
In their stead came the subdued grace of the _diner a la Russe_, a
well-chosen menu, before composing which Captain Winstanley studied
Gouffe's artistic cookery-book as carefully as a pious Israelite
studies the Talmud. The new style was as much more economical than the
old as it was more elegant. The table, with the Squire's old silver,
and fine dark blue and gold Worcester china, and the Captain's
picturesque grouping of hot