Major Dick still shot and fished, as was his right, over the
lands and waters that were still in his name, but the tenants, whose
fathers had loved him, had renounced the old allegiance. The
partridges were run down by the greyhounds that had killed off the
hares; the salmon were poached; worst of all, Derrylugga Gorse, the
covert that Dick had planted twenty-five years ago, on Carmody's farm,
in the middle of the best of the Broadwater Vale country, was burned
down, and a vixen and her cubs had perished with it.
Dick gave up the hounds at the end of the season.
"I've done my best to show sport for five and twenty years," he said,
"and I'm not going to spoil it now!"
It is impossible to deny that for Dick's wife this sacrifice had its
consolatory aspects. It was a long time now since there had been quite
enough money for anything at Mount Music. Those far-sighted guardian
angels who had compelled the investment of Lady Isabel's dowry in
gilt-edged securities, had placed the care of these in the hands of
hide-bound English trustees (the definition is Major Dick's) and the
amiable reader need therefore have no anxieties that starvation
threatened this well-meaning family, but, as Lady Isabel frequently
said, "what with the Boys, and Judith's trousseau, and the Wedding,
and One-Thing-and-Another" (which last is always a big item in the
domestic budget) the more common needs of every day had to submit to
very drastic condensation, and it was indisputable that the
Talbot-Lowry family-coach was running on the down-grade.
Pages:
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231