-and I've made some first-rate 'untsmen, I'm dim'd if I don't think
Frostyface does me about as much credit as any on 'em. Ah, sir,' continued
Mr. Bragg, with a shake of his head, 'take my word for it, sir, there's
nothin' like a professional. S-c-e-u-s-e me, sir,' added he, with a low bow
and a sort of military salute of his hat; 'but dim all gen'l'men 'untsmen,
say I.'

Mr. Bragg had talked himself into several good places. Lord Reynard's and
the Duke of Downeybird's among others. He had never been able to keep any
beyond his third season, his sauce or his science being always greater than
the sport he showed. Still he kept up appearances, and was nothing daunted,
it being a maxim of his that 'as one door closed another opened.'

Mr. Puffington's was the door that now opened for him.

What greater humiliation can a free-born Briton be subjected to than paying
a man eighty or a hundred pounds a year, and finding him house, coals, and
candles, and perhaps a cow, to be his master?

Such was the case with poor Mr. Puffington, and such, we grieve to say, is
the case with nine-tenths of the men who keep hounds; with all, indeed,
save those who can hunt themselves, or who are blest with an aspiring whip,
ready to step into the huntsman's boots if he seems inclined to put them
off in the field. How many portly butlers are kept in subjection by having
a footman ready to supplant them. Of all cards in the servitude pack,
however, the huntsman's is the most difficult one to play. A man may say,
'I'm dim'd if I won't clean my own boots or my own horse, before I'll put
up with such a fellow's impudence'; but when it comes to hunting his own
hounds, it is quite another pair of shoes, as Mr. Bragg would say.

Mr. Bragg regularly took possession of poor Puff; as regularly as a
policeman takes possession of a prisoner. The reader knows the sort of
feeling one has when a lawyer, a doctor, an architect, or any one whom we
have called in to assist, takes the initiative, and treats one as a
nonentity, pooh-poohing all one's pet ideas, and upsetting all one's
well-considered arrangements.

Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff
accordingly. If a 'perfect servant' is only to begot out of the
establishments of the great, Mr. Bragg might be looked upon as a paragon of
perfection, and now combined in his own person all the bad practices of all
the places he had been in. Having 'accepted Mr. Puffington's situation,