, the ground was very soft, and he had not been kicked or trodden
on, so that when he had had a warm bath he was as right as ninepence,
only a little stiff.

Gould came to see after his welfare while he was dressing, and hoped he
was not hurt, and expressed an opinion that he would learn to ride in
time, and was glad they had only gone out with the jelly dogs instead of
the foxhounds, or his friend and guest would not have seen anything of
the run. All which was trying, coming from a fellow who had looked upon
him as an oracle, and to whom he had condescended. At dinner, too, he
was chaffed a little; but the hardest rider in the county, who had
condescended to go out with the harriers to try a new horse, the
foxhounds not meeting that day, and who was dining with Mr Gould
afterwards, came to his rescue. "Never mind them, lad," he said; "you
went as straight as a die. I saw you taking everything as it came,
never looking for a gap or a gate, and it is not many of them can say
the same."

This was Saturday, and Crawley was glad of a day of rest when he got up
next morning, he was so stiff. On Monday preparations for the private
theatricals began in earnest. Dresses came down from London, and were
tried on and altered; the large drawing-room was given up to the hands
of workmen, who fitted up a small stage at one end of it, with sloping
seats in front, that all the guests might see. Those who were to act
were always going into corners and getting some one to hear them their
parts, and there were rehearsals. It was all a great bore to Crawley,
who would fain have spent the time in shooting or riding, of which he
got but little, so exacting was Miss Clarissa; and he was to go home on
the Thursday, the day after the entertainment.

As the time approached, too, he felt more and more uncomfortable; he had
found out from young Gould that the whole thing had been got up by his
sister Clarissa, who thought herself a very good actress, and wished to
show off; and he could easily see that he would not have been asked to
the house at all, if it had not been for his school-fellow's talk, about
what a clever individual he was--able to do everything. Now, next to
Sir Valentine May, no character in the comedy is so important for the
display of Dorothy Budd's (Clarissa's) performance as Ensign Bellefleur;
and the more clearly Crawley saw this, the more fervently did he wish
that he was out of it. It was too late now, however,