lady's maid in a quality family) up
to Nonsuch House, as well for the sake of the airing--for the road was
pleasant and picturesque--as to see if he could get the 'little trifle' Sir
Harry owed him for post-horses, bottles of soda-water, and such trifles as
country gentlemen run up scores for at their posting-houses--scores that
seldom get smaller by standing. In these excursions Mr. Viney made the
acquaintance of Mr. Watchorn; and a huntsman being a character with whom
even the landlord of an inn--we beg pardon, hotel and posting-house--may
associate without degradation, Viney and Watchorn became intimate. Watchorn
sympathized with Viney, and never failed to take a glass in passing, either
at exercise or out hunting, to deplore that such a nice-looking house, so
'near the station, too,' should be ruined as an inn. It was after a more
than usual libation that Watchorn, trotting merrily along with the hounds,
having accomplished three blank days in succession, asked himself, as he
looked upon the surrounding vale from the rising ground of Hammercock Hill,
with the cream-coloured station and the rose-coloured hotel peeping through
the trees, whether something might not be done to give the latter a lift.
At first he thought of a pigeon match--a sweepstake open to all
England--fifty members say, at two pound ten each, seven pigeons, seven
sparrows, twenty-one yards rise, two ounces of shot, and so on. But then,
again, he thought there would be a difficulty in getting guns. A coursing
match--how would that do? Answer: 'No hares.' The farmers had made such an
outcry about the game, that the landowners had shot them all off, and now
the farmers were grumbling that they couldn't get a course.

'Dash my buttons!' exclaimed Watchorn; 'it would be the very thing for a
steeple-chase! There's old Puff's hounds, and old Scamp's hounds, and these
hounds,' looking down on the ill-sorted lot around him; 'and the deuce is
in it if we couldn't give the thing such a start as would bring down the
lads of the "village," and a vast amount of good business might be done.
I'm dashed if it isn't the very country for a steeple-chase!' continued
Watchorn, casting his eye over Cloverly Park, round the enclosure of
Langworth Grange, and up the rising ground of Lark Lodge.

The more Watchorn thought of it, the more he was satisfied of its
feasibility, and he trotted over, the next day, to the Old Duke of
Cumberland, to see his friend on the subject. V