And thus I have presented a few of the leading _dramatis personæ_; others are waiting in the side-scenes ready to make their appearance. CHAPTER V. BETTY TRAPPS COMES TO NOTICE. The life of Rockville, Woodburn, and their vicinities presented little to chronicle for some time. Simon Degge was angrily commented upon by the neighbouring squirearchy, for having thrown open the game on his estate to the farmers. “This is the way,” they said at their mutual dinners, “with these plebeians. Having no taste for gentlemanly sport themselves, they would like to see it annihilated, and the landed proprietors reduced for amusement to flocking to Castleborough, and winding cotton-balls, or manufacturing stockings.” This idea was very much applauded, and made the ladies of the county very merry. “We must all go to help the gentlemen,” they said, “and seam hose, and help to ‘take in.’” Mr. Markham, the rector of Rockville, though agreeing with his landed friends in the main idea, said he was bound to say that Mr. Degge was rather a keen sportsman, and a prodigious good shot. He had seen him drop his birds right and left in a most masterly way; where he had picked up the skill rather puzzled him. Certainly, it could not come by nature, as Dogberry thought reading and writing did; but it must be admitted that he was a prodigiously clever man. And, in fact, unless he had been, how could he have got on so? “How do good-looking fellows manage to marry rich heiresses?” asked Sir Benjamin Bullockshed. “Ah, well; but that was not altogether the way that Mr. Degge had mounted into such fortune. No, no; it was too well known that he had got rich before he got the rich wife. _He_ was not going to be the panegyrist of Degge; he did not approve of letting either farmers or hosiers loose on the game. By no means; and, besides, Degge had no taste at all for coursing, nor for hunting.” “How should he?” asked Sir Thomas Tenterhook. “Probably, in his younger days he might manage to leap over a counter, but I should like to see him take a good hawthorn fence with a ditch on the other side, or a five-barred gate.” “But he could do it; nay, I have seen him do it,” said Mr. Markham, “in riding over his farm one day; and if he had hunted all his life, he could not have shown himself more at home in the saddle.” “Gad! Markham,” said Sir Thomas, “but Degge has turned your head marvellously in a very little time. Why, you are a regular trumpeter for him. By your account he is possessed of all the graces and endowments of a specimen man.” “Oh! don’t you believe it, Sir Thomas. It is nonsense,” replied Mr. Markham; “it is useless to deny what is plain to everybody; but I join you in all you say of Degge’s vulgar impudence in presuming to snatch a property, as it were, out of the hands of such a gentleman as Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, and in letting loose half the hosiers of Castleborough on Sir Benjamin’s game.”