d?"
continued his worship, highly delighted. "Very lucky! You'll have
nothing to pay for her till next half-year, and then I'm afraid that
this fellow Poulton will insist upon her being entered as a sporting
dog, which is fourteen shillings. But that's a future concern. As to
the surcharge, I'll take care of that A beautiful creature, is not she,
Mary? Very lucky that we happened to drive this way." And with kind
adieus to Tom and his grandmother, who were as grateful as people could
be, we departed.

About a week after, Tom and Chloe in their turn appeared at our cottage.
All had gone right in the matter of the surcharge. The commissioners
had decided in Mrs. King's favour, and Mr. Poulton had been forced to
succumb. But his grandmother had considered the danger of offending
their good landlord Sir John, by keeping a sporting dog so near his
coverts, and also the difficulty of paying the tax; and both she and Tom
had made up their minds to offer Chloe to my father. He had admired her,
and everybody said that he was as good a dog-master as Mr. Poulton was a
bad one; and he came sometimes coursing to Ashley End, and then perhaps
he would let them both see poor Chloe; "for grandmother," added Tom,
"though she seemed somehow ashamed to confess as much, was at the bottom
of her heart pretty nigh as fond of her as he was himself. Indeed, he
did not know who could help being fond of Chloe, she had so many pretty
ways." And Tom, making manful battle against the tears that would start
into his eyes, almost as full of affection as the eyes of Chloe herself,
and hugging his beautiful pet, who seemed upon her part to have a
presentiment of the evil that awaited her, sate down as requested in the
hall, whilst my father considered his proposition.

Upon the whole, it seemed to us kindest to the parties concerned, the
widow King, Tom, and Chloe, to accept the gift. Sir John was a kind man,
and a good landlord, but he was also a keen sportsman; and it was
quite certain that he would have no great taste for a dog of such
high sporting blood close to his best preserves; the keeper also would
probably seize hold of such a neighbour as a scapegoat, in case of any
deficiency in the number of hares and pheasants; and then their great
enemy, Mr. Poulton, might avail himself of some technical deficiency to
bring Mrs. King within the clutch of a surcharge. There might not always
be an oversight in that Shylock's bond, nor a wise judge, young