The next morning Alice once again made an attempt to entice her better half away from the pleasures of the plains; but the rabbits had begun barking the young ash-trees in a favourite plantation, and were to be “pulled down” accordingly. This occupation lasted several days; at the expiration of which period certain poachers, choosing to join in the amusement uninvited, had to be “pulled up” for their iniquities--a series of ups and downs which left only two days vacant before the important Tuesday dedicated to the dinner-party at Allerton would arrive. The first of these days it rained cats and dogs, and snowed fragments of polar bears so decidedly, that even Harry could not get out till about half-past three, when, in desperation, he enveloped himself in a Macintosh, and galloped over to _the_ town, five miles off (as all towns are from all country houses), to match some ribbon for Alice, and look at the newspaper on his own account. The _County Press_ was just out, and therein Harry perceived a leading article attacking the decision arrived at by himself and his brother magistrates in the case of the “pulled up” poachers. This being equally irritating and interesting, he sat down in the reading-room of the library diligently to peruse the same--phsa-ing, pish-ing, and “confounding the fellow” at every second line. He had just got to a paragraph beginning, “Mr. C--d--le may be well qualified to lead the way across a stiff line of country after the hounds, or roll over unoffending hares and rabbits in a _battue_--but that is no proof that he possesses an equal right to ride rough-shod over the enactments of a British Parliament, or to overturn the decrees of abler lawyers than are to be found among the bench of magistrates at H--------,” when a large hand was placed over his eyes, and a loud, jovial voice exclaimed-- “Never mind, Harry, my boy--little Flipkins the editor’s got a wife with the devil’s own temper, and she helps him to write the leaders; she took a dislike to you when she was Miss Jamby, and kept the confectioner’s shop, when you neglected her, and flirted with the girl behind the counter, because she happened to be the prettiest, and now she’s paying you off; you can’t horsewhip a woman, you know, so you’d better take it easy.” Before the speaker had arrived at the conclusion of his advice gratis, Coverdale had removed the hand which impeded his vision, and turning round, exclaimed-- “Why, it’s Tom Rattleworth, by all that’s extraordinary--I thought you were in Canada, with your regiment, man!” “So I was till the gout carried off the governor, and left me a miserable orphan with £15,000 a-year in my pocket. When that lamentable event occurred I thought I was, for the first time in my life, worth taking care of, so determined to cut the red cloth and pipe-clay business, and come home and live virtuously ever after.”