“Confound Mr. Crane!”--thus ran Harry’s thoughts--“confound the old fellow! he’s coming to marry Alice--my nice, warm-hearted little friend, Alice! I don’t by any means approve of it. He’s old enough to be her father, or anybody else’s, for that matter: the thing is ridiculous--quite absurd!--Besides, the dear little girl dislikes him--naturally she does: there’s nothing to like in him. Why, she cares more about me than she does about him!” He paused in thought, removed his hat, pushed back his thick, clustering hair, put his hat on again, and continued: “I declare, if I’d not entirely made up my mind against marrying, I’d enter for the stakes myself, and see if one could not jockey the old fellow and governor Hazlehurst too. Alice is a prize well worth winning; but it’s too late to change one’s mind! I ought to have behaved differently to her at first, if I’d wanted her to fall in love with me--though I think I’ve got over all that pretty thoroughly, too. Ah! well, I’ve chosen my line, and must stick to it; and as the shooting season isn’t so very far off now, thank goodness, I shall contrive to make it out somehow, I dare say. And, by Jove, there’s a whole pack of birds sunning themselves in that great field--five or six coveys all got together--and stunning good coveys they must be, too. There’s a gap in the hedge; I’ll leap over and see if I can get near enough to count them. Now, Lancelot--steady, sir!--you _must_ do it--over we go! Famously cleared! I wouldn’t take five hundred guineas for you, you beauty! that I wouldn’t. We’ll show some of ’em the way across country when the hunting begins; won’t we astonish their weak minds for them, rather!” and so, patting and caressing his horse, Harry made a wide circuit, and availing himself of the shelter of a belt of trees, contrived to get near enough to the partridges to count them; by which process he arrived at the interesting discovery that there were exactly thirty brace, with one bird over; which ornithological irregularity rather distressed and provoked him, though why it should have done so neither he nor, as we imagine, any one else, could possibly conceive.