On the present occasion carriages were drawn up on all the
roads, and horses were clustered on each side of the brook, and the
hounds sat stately on their haunches where riflemen usually kneel to
fire, and there was a hum of merry voices, and the bright colouring
of pink coats, and the sheen of ladies' hunting toilettes, and that
mingled look of business and amusement which is so peculiar to our
national sports. Two hundred men and women had come there for the
chance of a run after a fox,--for a chance against which the odds are
more than two to one at every hunting day,--for a chance as to which
the odds are twenty to one against the success of the individuals
collected; and yet, for every horseman and every horsewoman there,
not less than L5 a head will have been spent for this one day's
amusement. When we give a guinea for a stall at the opera we think
that we pay a large sum; but we are fairly sure of having our music.
When you go to Copperhouse Cross you are by no means sure of your
opera.
Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat
the women in numbers by ten to one, and though they certainly speak
the louder, the concrete sound that meets the ears of any outside
listener is always a sound of women's voices? At Copperhouse Cross
almost every one was talking, but the feeling left upon the senses
was that of an amalgam of feminine laughter, feminine affectation,
and feminine eagerness.
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