“Now, Frank, don’t be a fool, or you’ll repent it all your life: what does it signify how much you give up to such a man as Lord Cashel? You don’t think, do you, that he objects to our being at Kelly’s Court? Because I’m sure we wouldn’t stay a moment if we thought that.” “Mother, I wouldn’t part with a cur dog out of the place to please Lord Cashel. But if I were to do everything on earth at his beck and will, it would make no difference: he will never let me marry Fanny Wyndham if he can help it; but, thank God, I don’t believe he can.” “I hope not—I hope not. You’ll never see half such a fortune again.” “Well, mother, say nothing about it one way or the other, to anybody. And as you now know how the matter stands, it’s no good any of us talking more about it till I’ve settled what I mean to do myself.” “I shall hate her,” said Sophy, “if her getting all her brother’s money changes her; but I’m sure it won’t.” And so the conversation ended. Lord Ballindine had not rested in his paternal halls the second night, before he had commenced making arrangements for a hunt breakfast, by way of letting all his friends know that he was again among them. And so missives, in Guss and Sophy’s handwriting, were sent round by a bare-legged little boy, to all the Mounts, Towns, and Castles, belonging to the Dillons, Blakes, Bourkes, and Browns of the neighbourhood, to tell them that the dogs would draw the Kelly’s Court covers at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday morning, and that the preparatory breakfast would be on the table at ten. This was welcome news to the whole neighbourhood. It was only on the Sunday evening that the sportsmen got the intimation, and very busy most of them were on the following Monday to see that their nags and breeches were all right—fit to work and fit to be seen. The four Dillons, of Ballyhaunis, gave out to their grooms a large assortment of pipe-clay and putty-powder. Bingham Blake, of Castletown, ordered a new set of girths to his hunting saddle; and his brother Jerry, who was in no slight degree proud of his legs, but whose nether trappings were rather the worse from the constant work of a heavy season, went so far as to go forth very early on the Monday morning to excite the Ballinrobe tailor to undertake the almost impossible task of completing him a pair of doeskin by the Tuesday morning. The work was done, and the breeches home at Castletown by eight—though the doeskin had to be purchased in Tuam, and an assistant artist taken away from his mother’s wake, to sit up all night over the seams. But then the tailor owed a small trifle of arrear of rent for his potato-garden, and his landlord was Jerry Blake’s cousin-german [34]. There’s nothing carries one further than a good connexion, thought both Jerry and the tailor when the job was finished.