He was a stout man,
constitutionally nervous of fire-arms, and a six-hours' tramp with
a heavy gun across ploughed fields, in company with a crowd of
careless persons who kept blazing away within an inch of other
people's noses, harassed and exhausted him. He had to get out of
bed at four on chilly October mornings to go cub-hunting, and twice
a week throughout the winter--except when a blessed frost brought
him a brief respite--he had to ride to hounds. That he usually got
off with nothing more serious than mere bruises and slight
concussions of the spine, he probably owed to the fortunate
circumstances of his being little and fat. At stiff timber he shut
his eyes and rode hard; and ten yards from a river he would begin
to think about bridges.
Yet he never complained.
"If you are a country gentleman," he would say, "you must behave as
a country gentleman, and take the rough with the smooth."
As ill fate would have it a chance speculation doubled his fortune,
and it became necessary that he should go into Parliament and start
a yacht. Parliament made his head ache, and the yacht made him
sick. Notwithstanding, every summer he would fill it with a lot of
expensive people who bored him, and sail away for a month's misery
in the Mediterranean.
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