The Reverend was not in the best of humours. He had been feeling a horse’s legs—the swelling of which no stimulant, however strong, seemed to be able to reduce. It _was_ aggravating to make his hands smell like a chemist’s shop, and at the same time to be aware that his favourite’s legs were getting rounder and rounder under the application. It was _not_ consolatory to be told by the groom that “the old ’oss was about wore out.” Nor was it reassuring to reflect that he wanted for half-a-dozen other purposes the couple of hundred it would take to replace him. These, however, are the annoyances to which hunting men are subject; the metaphorical thorns that bristle round our rose, and make her all the dearer and the sweeter for their sharpness. As he returned to the house _viâ_ the pigsties, he could scarcely raise sufficient interest to examine the lately-arrived litter of nine. Spotted black and white, they reminded him of fox-hound puppies; and to the Reverend, short of horses as he was, the association was but suggestive of annoyance. When he entered the little drawing-room, Mrs. Dove knew by his face that the moment was an unpropitious one at which to hazard a request for anything she wanted to obtain; but having managed him for a quarter of a century, it would have been odd if she had not known exactly how to get her own way with him now. “My dear,” she said, “I’ve a letter from that man at Brighton about the house we had last year. He wants to know if we would like to engage it for a couple of months in the spring. It would be a good opportunity to give Cissy a little sea-bathing, you know.” Now, the Reverend had the same horror of that, as of other watering-places, which is usually entertained by middle-aged gentlemen of settled habits, who do not choose to accept second-rate dissipation and salt-water as equivalents for the comforts of a home. He had indeed, during the previous summer, been seduced into spending two months at Brighton, under the erroneous impression that on those Sussex downs the harriers hunted all the year round; but, having found out his mistake, had inwardly registered a vow never to be “let in” for such a benefit again. It was no wonder that he rose freely at the suggestion.