any as it is. I wonder who
this can be." A melancholy brougham passed up the drive. There were
three old maids, all looking sweetly alike; one was a cripple who walked
with crutches, and her smile was the best and the gayest imaginable
smile.

"How little material welfare has to do with our happiness," thought
John. "There is one whose path is the narrowest, and she is happier and
better than I." And then the three sweet old maids talked with their
cousin of the weather; and they all wondered--a sweet feminine
wonderment--if he would see a girl that day whom he would marry.

Presently the house was full of people. The passage was full of girls; a
few men sat at breakfast at the end of the long table. Some red coats
passed across the green glare of the park, and the hounds trotted about
a single horseman. Voices. "Oh! how sweet they look! oh, the dear dogs!"
The huntsman stopped in front of the house, the hounds sniffed here
and there, the whips trotted their horses and drove them back. "Get
together, get together; get back there; Woodland, Beauty, come up here."
The hounds rolled on the grass, and leaned their fore-paws on the
railings, willing to be caressed.

"How sweet they are, look at their soft eyes," cried an old lady whose
deity was a pug, and whose back garden reeked of the tropics. "Look how
good and kind they are; they would not hurt anything; it is only wicked
men who teach them to be ..." The old lady hesitated before the word
"bad," and murmured something about killing.

There was a lady with melting eyes, many children, and a long sealskin,
and she availed herself of the excuse of seeing the hounds to rejoin a
young man in whom she was interested. There was an old sportsman of
seventy winters, as hale and as hearty as an oak, standing on the
door-step, and he made John promise to come over and see him. The girls
strolled about in groups. As usual young men were lacking. Looking at
his watch, the huntsman pressed the sides of his horse, and rode to draw
the covers at the end of the park. The ladies followed to see the start,
although the mud was inches deep under foot. "Hu in, hu in," cried the
huntsman. The whips trotted round cracking their long whips. Not a sound
was heard. Suddenly there was a whimper, "Hark to Woodland," cried the
huntsman. The hounds rallied to the point, but nothing came of it.
Apparently the old bitch was at fault. The huntsman muttered something
inaudible. But some few hundred