"No. Come along, Norah, there's a splendid stretch of gra.s.s here: let's canter!"

They had agreed upon a Christian-name footing some time before, when it seemed that Hardress was likely to be a permanent member of the household. She looked at him now, as they cantered along through the dew-wet gra.s.s at the side of the road. No one would have guessed at anything wrong with him: he was bronzed and clear-eyed, and sat as easily in the saddle as though he had never been injured.

"Sometimes," said Norah suddenly, "I find myself wondering which of your legs is the shop one!" She flushed. "I suppose I oughtn't to make personal remarks, but your leg does seem family property!"

"So it is," said Hardress, grinning. "Anyhow, you couldn't make a nicer personal remark than that one. So I forgive you. But it's all thanks to you people."

"We couldn't have done anything if you hadn't been determined to get on," Norah answered. "As soon as you made up your mind to that--well, you got on."

"I don't know how you stood me so long," he muttered. Then they caught up to the riders ahead, and were received by Geoffrey with a joyful shout.

"You were nearly late, Norah," said Mr. Linton.

"I dragged her from the kitchen, sir," Hardress said. "She and Miss de Lisle were poring over food--if we get no dinner to-night it will be our fault."

"If _you_ had the responsibility of feeding fourteen hungry people you wouldn't make a joke of it," said Norah. "It's very solemn, especially when the fishmonger fails you hopelessly."

"There's always tinned salmon," suggested her father.

"Tinned salmon, indeed!" Norah's voice was scornful. "We haven't come yet to giving the Tired People dinner out of a tin. However, it's all right: Miss de Lisle will work some sort of a miracle. I'm not going to think of housekeeping for a whole day!"

The meet was four miles away, near a marshy hollow thickly covered with osiers and willows. A wood fringed the marsh, and covered a hill which rose from a little stream beyond it. Here and there was a glimpse of the yellow flame of gorse. There were rolling fields all round, many of them ploughed: it had not yet been made compulsory for every landowner to till a portion of his holding, but English farmers were beginning to awake to the fact that while the German submarine flourished it would be both prudent and profitable to grow as much food as possible, and the plough had been busy. The gate into the field overlooking the marsh stood open; a few riders were converging towards it from different points. The old days of crowded meets and big fields of riders were gone. Only a few plucky people struggled to keep the hounds going, and to find work for the hunters that had escaped the first requisition of horses for France.

The hounds came into view as Mr. Linton's party arrived. The "Master"

came first, on a big, workmanlike grey; a tall woman, with a weatherbeaten face surmounted by a bowler hat. The hounds trotted meekly after her, one or another pausing now and then to drink at a wayside puddle before being rebuked for bad manners by a watchful whip. Mrs. Ainslie liked the Lintons; she greeted them pleasantly.

"Nice morning," she said. "Congratulations: I hear the boy is a Captain."

"We can't quite realize it," Norah said, laughing. "You see, we hardly knew he had grown up!"

"Well, he grew to a good size," said Mrs. Ainslie, with a smile.

"Hullo, Geoff. Are you going to follow to-day?"

"They won't let me," said Geoffrey dolefully. "I know Brecon and I could, but Mother says we're too small."

"Too bad!" said Mrs. Ainslie. "Never mind; you'll be big pretty soon."

A tall old man in knickerbockers greeted her: Squire Brand, who owned a famous property a few miles away, and who had the reputation of never missing a meet, although he did not ride. He knew every inch of the country; it was said that he could boast, at the end of a season, that he had, on the whole, seen more of the runs than any one else except the Master. He was a tireless runner, with an extraordinarily long stride, which carried him over fields and ditches and gave him the advantage of many a short cut impossible to most people. He knew every hound by name; some said he knew every fox in the country; and he certainly had an amazing knowledge of the direction a fox was likely to take. Horses, on the other hand, bored him hopelessly; he consented to drive them, in the days when motors were not, but merely as a means of getting from place to place. A splendid car, with a chauffeur much smarter than his master, had just dropped him: a grant figure in weatherbeaten Harris tweeds, grasping a heavy stick.

"We should get a good run to-day," he said.

"Yes--with luck," Mrs. Ainslie answered.

"Any news from the Colonel?"

"Nothing in particular--plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they had a very sporting time!"

Squire Brand chuckled.

"I don't doubt it," he said. "Did he say what they hunted?"

"Anything they could get, apparently. They began with a hare, and then got on to a rabbit, in some mysterious fashion. They finished up with a brisk run in the outskirts of a village, and got a kill--it turned out this time to be a cat!" Mrs. Ainslie's rather grim features relaxed into a smile. "If any one had told Val two years ago that he would be enthusiastic over a day like that!"

A few other riders had come up: two or three officers from a neighbouring town; a couple of old men, and a sprinkling of girls.

Philip Hardress was the only young man in plain clothes, and strangers who did not suspect anything amiss with his leg looked at him curiously.

"Look at that dear old thing!" he whispered to Norah, indicating a prim maiden lady who had arrived on foot. "I know she's aching for a chance to ask me why I'm not in khaki!" He grinned delightedly.

"She's rather like the old lady who met me in the train the other day, and after looking at me sadly for a few minutes said, 'My dear young man, do you not know that your King and Country want you?'"

"Phil! What did you say?"

"I said, 'Well, they've got one of my legs, and they don't seem to have any use for the remnant!' I don't think she believed me, so I invited her to prod it!" He chuckled at his grim joke. Three months ago he had shrunk from any mention of his injury as from the lash of a whip.

Mrs. Ainslie never wasted time. Two minutes' grace for any laggards--which gave time for the arrival of a stout lady on a weight-carrying cob--and then she moved on, and in a moment the hounds were among the osiers, hidden except that now and then a waving stern caught the eye. Occasionally there was a brief whimper, and once a young hound gave tongue too soon, and was, presumably, rebuked by his mother, and relapsed into hunting in shamed silence.

The osiers proved blank: they drew out, and went up the hill into the covert, while the field moved along to be as close as possible, and the followers on foot dodged about feverishly, hoping for luck that would make a fox break their way. Too often the weary lot of the foot contingent is to see nothing whatever after the hounds once enter covert, since the fox is apt to leave it as un.o.btrusively as possible at the far side, and to take as short a line as he can across country to another refuse. To follow the hounds on foot needs a stout heart and patience surpa.s.sing that of Job.

But those on horses know little of the blighting experiences of the foot-plodders: and when Norah went a-hunting everything ceased to exist for her except the white-and-black-and-tan hounds and the green fields, and Brunette under her, as eager as she for the first long-drawn-out note from the pack. They moved restlessly back and forth along the hillside, the black pony dancing with impatience at the faintest whimper from an unseen hound. Near them Killaloe set an example of steadiness--but with watchful eyes and p.r.i.c.ked ears.

Squire Brand came up to them.

"I'd advise you to get up near the far end of the covert," he said.

"It's almost a certainty that he'll break away there and make a bee-line across to Harley Wood. I hope he will, for there's less plough there than in the other direction." He hurried off, and Norah permitted Brunette to caper after him. A young officer on a big bay followed their example.

"Come along," he said to a companion. "It's a safe thing to follow old Brand's lead if you want to get away well."

Where the covert ended the hill sloped gently to undulating fields, divided by fairly stiff hedges with deep ditches, and occasionally by post-and-rail fences, more like the jumps that Norah knew in Australia. The going was good and sound, and there was no wire--that terror of the hunter. Norah had always hated wire, either plain or barbed. She held that it found its true level in being used against Germans.

Somewhere in a tangle of bracken an old hound spoke sharply. A little thrill ran through her. She saw her father put his pipe in his pocket and pull his hat more firmly down on his forehead, while she held back Brunette, who was dancing wildly. Then came another note, and another, and a long-drawn burst of music from the hounds; and suddenly Norah saw a stealthy russet form, with brush sweeping the ground, that stole from the covert and slid down the slope, and after him, a leaping wave of brown and white and black as hounds came bounding from the wood and flung themselves upon the scent, with Mrs. Ainslie close behind. Some one shouted "Gone awa-a-y!" in a voice that went ringing in echoes round the hillside.

Brunette bucked airily over the low fence near the covert, and Killaloe took it almost in his stride. Then they were racing side by side down the long slope, with the green turf like wet velvet underfoot; and the next hedge seemed rushing to meet them. Over, landing lightly in the next field; before them only the "Master" and whip, and the racing hounds, with burning eyes for the little red speck ahead, trailing his brush.

"By Jove, Norah!" said David Linton, "we're in for a run!"

Norah nodded. Speech was beyond her; only all her being was singing with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, p.r.i.c.ked ears--judging her distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on the pony's back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was all she needed to steady her at the jumps.

Near Harley Wood the fox decided regretfully that safety lay elsewhere: the enemy, running silently and surely, were too hot on his track. He crept through a hedge, and slipped like a shadow down a ditch; and hounds, jumping out, were at fault for a moment. The slight check gave the rest of the field time to get up.

"That's a great pony!" Norah heard the young officer say. She patted Brunette's arching neck.

Then a quick cast of the hounds picked up the scent, and again they were off, but no longer with the fences to themselves; so that it was necessary to be watchful for the cheerful enthusiast who jumps on top of you, and the prudent sportsman who wobbles all over the field in his gallop, seeking for a gap. Killaloe drew away again: there was no hunter in the country side to touch him. After him went Brunette, with no notion of permitting her stable companion to lose her in a run like this.

A tall hedge faced them, with an awkward take-off from the bank of a ditch. Killaloe crashed through; Brunette came like a bird in his tracks, Norah's arm across her face to ward off the loose branches.

She got through with a tear in her coat, landing on stiff plough through which Mrs. Ainslie's grey was struggling painfully.

Brunette's light burden was all in her favour here--Norah was first to the gate on the far side, opening it just in time for the "Master,"

and thrilling with joy at that magnate's brief "Thank you!" as she pa.s.sed through and galloped away. The plough had given the hounds a long lead. But ahead were only green fields, dotted by clumps of trees: racing ground, firm and springy. The air sang in their ears.

The fences seemed as nothing; the good horses took them in racing style, landing with no shock, and galloping on, needing no touch of whip or spur.