"Place aux dames" is a rule rigidly observed by gentlemen in the hunting field. Room for the hounds should form an equally inviolable law with ladies in the same place. And it is the more necessary to impress this upon beginners, because many a first-rate man who pilots ladies, although bold as a lion over a country, and cautious to a degree as to the line he takes for his fair _compagnon de chasse_, is oftentimes far too modest to check her exuberant riding, and the consequence is, many an anathema--not loud, but deep--is bestowed upon both by exasperated masters and huntsmen. Unlike the professional riding master, a first-rate pilot--such, I mean, as is paid for his services--though well behaved and respectful, is likely enough to lack much education, except such as he has received in the saddle or on practical farming matters; and his awe of a lady, properly so called, is so considerable as to preclude his exercise of the _fortiter in re_ altogether, no matter how much his charge is unwittingly infringing the rules of sport. I saw an amusing instance of this not long ago. A lady, the widow of a wealthy civil servant in India, having returned to her native land laden with the riches of the East, being still young and excessively fond of riding, purchased a stud of first-class hunters, took a nice little hunting box in Leicestershire for the season, and engaged the services of a very good man to pilot her. As a rule every lady rides in India--some of them ride very well; but a rattling gallop at gun fire, in the morning, over the racecourse at Ghindee or Bangalore, is quite a different matter to a gallop with the Pytchley hounds. The "Bebe sahib" (great lady) had no idea, mounted as she was, of anybody or anything (bar the fox) being in front of her. And be it known to those who have never been in India that "great ladies" there are "bad to talk to," being in the habit pretty much of paying very little attention to anything in the way of counsel coming from their subordinates. Our Indian widow was no exception. So she did all sorts of outrageous things in the field in riding in among the hounds--and, indeed, before them--to the disgust of the master and everybody else, including her pilot, who in her case was certainly no mentor--but the latter was too well paid to risk offending the peccant lady; he ventured a gentle hint or two, and, being snubbed, gave it up for a bad job. He was so severely rated, however, by the masters of hounds in the district--one of whom declared he would take them home directly he saw the lady and her pilot with them--that the latter was fairly at his wits' end to know how to keep the too dashing widow within bounds. Sorely puzzled, he sat in his spacious chimney nook one night smoking his pipe in moody silence, his wife knitting opposite him.