It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury
went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an
hour's leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and
quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs
without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the
trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace's lips sucked
in this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where
the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards
comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were
intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a
dragging brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and
disappeared amid some dead fern. They walked on, her father merely
observing, after watching the animal, "They are hunting somewhere near."
Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and
thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers
members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from
their movements that the chase had been stultified by general
puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a
minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic
excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her,
asking if she had seen the fox.
"Yes," said she. "We saw him some time ago--just out there."
"Did you cry Halloo?"
"We said nothing."
"Then why the d---- didn't you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?"
said the man, as he cantered away.
She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her
father's face, saw that it was quite red.
"He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the old man, in the
tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet
applied to himself. "And he wouldn't if he had been a gentleman.
'Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well
read and cultivated--how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy
field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from
trimming swedes or mangolds--joking with the rough work-folk and all
that--I could have stood it. But hasn't it cost me near a hundred a
year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the
neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret
of it? 'Twas because I was in your company. If a black-coated squire
or pa'son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn't have
spoken so."