"What's the matter, John?" began his spouse. "Matter!" he replied; "it's enough to drive a man mad; Mrs. Chutnee's going again to-morrow, and, as sure as fate, she'll ride over the hounds or do something, and get one into trouble." "What makes her go on so, John?" again inquired the _cara sposa_.--"Go on! it is go on: I think that the name for it. Go on over everything! no fence is too big for her. I like her for that, but she never knows when to stop. Last week she knocked an old gentleman over, and he lost a spick span new set of teeth as cost, I dare say, a matter of twenty guineas; and the day before yesterday she lamed a hound as was worth a lot of money, to say nothing of hurting the poor brute. I don't know what to be at with her, and that's a fact, because, barring her going so fast, she is the best-hearted lady ever I see." And John relapsed into silence, blowing mighty clouds of smoke, while his wife plied her knitting-needles. But a woman's wit, in difficult cases, is proverbial; and in the watches of the night a bright notion, based upon knowledge of her own sex, flashed upon the anxious mind of the snoring John's wife. The result was as follows. Next morning, true to time, John was in attendance to accompany the fair widow to the field. They had some distance to ride to covert, and after a smart spurt of a mile or two on the sward, the lady pulled her horse up to walk up a hill. "John," said the lady (who was in high spirits), "what do people here think of my riding?"--"Well, some thinks one thing, and some thinks another," was the reply. "That's no answer," observed the fair interlocutor; "what do they say? that is the thing. I know one thing they can't say; none of them can say they can stop me over any part of the country, no matter how big it is." Opportunity, says some wise man, is for him who waits. Now was John's opportunity to avail himself of his clever little wife's bright idea. "Stop you, my lady! no, that's just what they do all say; and what's more, they say you can't stop yourself--that you ain't got no hands, and your horse takes you just where he pleases, if it's even right over the hounds." The "Bebe sahib" was bitterly chagrined, for she prided herself justly upon her capital hands upon a horse. She was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, "I want you to tell me what to do, just to let these people know, as you do, that I have hands."--"Then I will tell you, my lady," said John, brightening up. "Just you do this: when the hounds get away, you let me go first, and keep your horse about a hundred yards behind me. I'll pick out a line big enough, I'll warrant, and that will show them all about your seat and your jumping. Then about the hands; if you please, whenever I pull up, you do the same. They say as you can't stop your horse, you know."