Judge of her disgust on meeting her mamma on the staircase at learning that
his lordship had got up at six o'clock, and had gone to meet his hounds on
the other side of the county. That Baggs had boiled his oatmeal porridge in
his bedroom, and his lordship had eaten it as he was dressing.

It may be asked, what was the maid about not to tell her.

The fact is, that ladies'-maids are only numb hands in all that relates to
hunting, and though Juliana knew that his lordship was up, she thought he
had gone to have his hunt before breakfast, just as the young gentlemen in
the last place she lived in used to go and have a bathe.

[Illustration]

Baggs, we may add, was a married man, and Juliana and he had not had much
conversation.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MR. BRAGG'S KENNEL MANAGEMENT

The reader will now have the kindness to consider that Mr. Puffington has
undergone his swell huntsman, Dick Bragg, for three whole years, during
which time it was difficult to say whether his winter's service or his
summer's impudence was most oppressive. Either way, Mr. Puffington had had
enough both of him and the honours of hound-keeping. Mr. Bragg was not a
judicious tyrant. He lorded it too much over Mr. Puffington; was too fond
of showing himself off, and exposing his master's ignorance before the
servants, and field. A stranger would have thought that Mr. Bragg, and not
'Mr. Puff,' as Bragg called him, kept the hounds. Mr. Puffington took it
pretty quietly at first, Bragg inundating him with what they did at the
Duke of Downeybird's, Lord Reynard's, and the other great places in which
he had lived, till he almost made Puff believe that such treatment was a
necessary consequence of hound-keeping. Moreover, the cost was heavy, and
the promised subscriptions were almost wholly imaginary; even if they had
been paid, they would not have covered a quarter of the expense Mr. Bragg
ran him to; and worst of all, there was an increasing instead of a
diminishing expenditure. Trust a servant for keeping things up to the mark.

All things, however, have an end, and Mr. Bragg began to get to the end of
Mr. Puff's patience. As Puff got older he got fonder of his five-pound
notes, and began to scrutinize bills and ask questions; to be, as Mr. Bragg
said, 'very little of the gentleman'; Bragg, however, being quite one of
your 'make-hay-while-the-sun-shines' sort, and knowing too well the style
of man to calculate on a lengthened duration of o