“Well now,” replied Dicky, screwing up his mouth, with an apologetic touch of his hat, knowing that that was his weak point, “well now, I don’t mean to say that she’s zactly—no, not zactly, your lordship’s model,—not a large full-bodied woman like Mrs. Blissland or Miss Poach, but an elegant, _very_ elegant, well-set-up young lady, with a high-bred hair about her that one seldom sees in the country, for though we breeds our women very beautiful—uncommon ‘andsome, I may say—we don’t polish them hup to that fine degree of parfection that they do in the towns, and even if we did they would most likely spoil the ‘ole thing by some untoward unsightly dress, jest as a country servant spoils a London livery by a coloured tie, or goin’ about with a great shock head of ‘air, or some such disfigurement; but this young lady, to my mind, is a perfect pictor, self, oss, and seat,—all as neat and perfect as can be, and nothing that one could either halter or amend. She is what, savin’ your lordship’s presence, I might call the ‘pink of fashion and the mould of form!’—Dicky sawing away at his hat as he spoke. “Tall, slim, and genteel, I suppose,” observed his lordship drily. “Jest so,” assented Dicky, with a chuck of the chin, making a clean breast of it, “jest so,” adding, “at least as far as one can judge of her in her ‘abit, you know.” “Thought so,” muttered his lordship. And having now gained one of the doors in the wall, they cut across the deer-studded park, and were presently back at the Castle. And his lordship ate his dinner, and quaffed his sweet and dry and twenty-five Lafitte without ever thinking about either the horse, or the lady, or the habit, or anything connected with the foregoing conversation, while the reigning favourite, Mrs. Moffatt, appeared just as handsome as could be in his eyes. CHAPTER VIII. CUB-HUNTING. 069m _Original Size_