CHAPTER XVII

PLUCKWELLE PRESERVES

EXT morning, in accordance with Sir Archey’s injunctions, as Mr. Jorrocks sat at a capital breakfast, Mr. Snapshot, the keeper, sent to know if he would please to go out shooting, or coursing, or rabbiting, and finding that the covers were near the house, and pretty full of pheasants, our M.F.H. thought he might as well have a “blaze among ’em” before he went home. Accordingly he sought Sir Archey’s dressing-room, and borrowed a pair of his best thick shoes and leather gaiters, which, with a fustian coat of the keeper’s, made him pretty perfect, and the stables being in the way to the kennels, he thought he might as well see how his hack was, and look at his proposed purchase. Accordingly, preceded by Mr. Snapshot, he passed through a lofty, deserted-looking, cobwebby, ten-stalled stable, with a two-stalled one beyond, in which were a couple of shooting ponies, of which Mr. Snapshot spoke approvingly; then crossing the central passage, they traversed another two-stall, and entered upon a somewhat better conditioned corresponding stable to the ten.

First there stood Mr. Jorrocks’s hundred-guinea horse, with a wretched old rag of a rug over it, then a pair of better-clothed browns that Snapshot alluded to as “our ’cage ’orses”; then, as Mr. Jorrocks ’ipssed on to a bright bang-tailed bay beyond, thinking that would be his friend, Snapshot seized him suddenly by the arm, with a “take care of ’am, sir! take care!—He’ll kick ye to a certainty!”

“Wot, he’s wicious, is he?” observed Mr. Jorrocks coolly, eyeing the now well laid-back ears and exuberant white of the eye.

“Most vicious brute alive!” replied Mr. Snapshot. “If he was to get you off, he’d stand considerin’ whether he should kick out your right eye or your left.”

“In-deed,” mused Mr. Jorrocks—“pleasant ’oss to ’ave.”

“We’re expectin’ an old gent from Handley Cross to look at ’im,” observed the keeper, “but I think he’ll have to be crazier than they say he is afore he buys ’im.”

“I think so too,” assented Mr. Jorrocks—stumping on out of heels’ reach.

They then got the dogs out of the kennel, and proceeded to the pheasants.

Mr Jorrocks, being out of practice, did not make much of a hand at first, which, coupled with the injunctions all the servants were under to make the stranger as comfortable as possible, induced Snapshot to take him to the home cover, when the pheasants rising in clouds and the hares streaming out like sand ropes, our worthy friend very soon bagged his five brace of pheasants and three hares. Snapshot, now thinking “tipping time” was come, and feeling for his pheasants, proposed a truce, when Mr. Jorrocks, handing him the gun, picked out three brace of the best birds, with which he trudged away, leaving the astonished Snapshot to follow with the rest. Hares he wouldn’t take, thinking his riotous hounds would kill him plenty of them. He then very coolly locked the pheasants up in his vehicle, and ordering the horse to be put-to, was ready for a start by the time it came to the door. With a loving leave-taking of Mrs Markham, he was presently in his rattle-trap and away. A favourable road incline with the horse’s head towards home, sent the hundred-guinea nag along, and Mr. Jorrocks began to think it “wasn’t so bad as it seemed”

As he neared the last unlodged gates in Sir Archey’s grounds, he saw another vehicle approaching, and each driver thinking to get the other to open the gate, they timed themselves so as to meet with it between them.

“Sky ye a copper who opens it!” at length exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, after a good stare at his much muffled up vis-à-vis.

“’Eads or tails?” continued he, producing a half-crown piece—“’Eads I win! tails you lose!”

“Heads!” cried the stranger.

“It’s tails!” replied Mr. Jorrocks, pretending to look at it, “so you opens it.”

The youth then got out and did so.

“Prop it hopen! prop it hopen!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, adding, “there arn’t no cattle in either field, and it may as well stand that way as not.”

The gentleman did as he was bid, drawing his vehicle—a German waggon with three crests (very symptomatic of money)—alongside of Mr. Jorrocks’s.

“You’ll be agoin’ to Sir Harchey’s, I guess,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, after scrutinizing his fat, vacant face intently.

“I am,” replied the stranger.

“Well, I’m jest a comin’ from there,” continued our friend, stroking his chin complacently, thinking of the pheasants and the fun he had had.

“Indeed,” smiled the gentleman.

“He’s not at ’ome,” observed Mr. Jorrocks.

“At home to me,” replied the stranger, with a man-of-the-house sort of air.

“Humph,” mused Mr. Jorrocks, adding, after a pause,—“Well, now blow me tight, I shouldn’t be at all s’prised, if they’re been a takin’ o’ me for you. Thought they were sweeter upon me than a mere ’oss-dealin’ case required, unless indeed they took me for a most egregius John Ass.”

“Hope they’ve used you well,” observed the stranger.

“Capital,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “and if it wasn’t that I ’ave a ’ticklar engagement, I wouldn’t mind returnin’ and spendin’ the evenin’ with you. Independent of a capital dinner, I had just as good a drink as man need wish for. A’most two bottles of undeniable black strap, besides et ceteras, and no more ’eadache than the crop o’ my w’ip.”

“Indeed,” observed the stranger, thinking he was lucky to escape such a sand-bag.

“True, I assure you,” affirmed Jorrocks—“shouldn’t know that I’d taken more nor my usual quantity; shot as well as ever I did i’ my life this mornin’, and altogether I’m uncommon pleased with my jaunt, and that reminds me,” continued he, flourishing his whip bag-man-i-cally over his head, and thinking how he had got to the windward of Sir Archey, “you can do summat for me—I’m Mr. Jorrocks, the M.F.H.—you’ll most likely have ’eard o’ me—I ’unts the country. Well, I’ve been to look at an ’oss of Sir Harchey’s—a werry nice h’animal he is, but ’ardly hup to my weight—I’m a sixteen stunner, you see. ’Ave the goodness to make my compliments to Sir Harchey, and tell ’im I’m werry much ’bliged by his purlite hoffer on ’im, and that I’m werry sorry he wasn’t at ’ome, so that I might ’ave ’ad the pleasure o’ makin’ his personal ’quaintance, as well as that of his Port;” so saying, Mr. Jorrocks shortened his hold of the reins, and dropping the point of his whip scientifically into the Handley Cross hack, bowed to his friend, and bowled away homewards.

And when Sir Archey returned, and found the indignities that had been put upon him, he was exceeding wrath, and vowed vengeance against the grocer.