But Claire isn't
very feminine: I've always felt her hardness."
"Then that's why she didn't speak to you," Lee assented superficially.
"I'll go over tonight, after dinner. They must be pretty nearly ready
to drop the fox, and it's beginning to drizzle."
There was, soon after that, an exodus from the back of the house to the
fields beyond. It was a very fair hunting country, rolling and clear of
brush, with grouped woods on the surrounding hills and streams in the
swales below. The clouds were broken and aqueous, and the grass held a
silver veil of fine raindrops. Only an inconsiderable part of those
present were following the hounds; the others, in a restricted variety
of sporting garb--the men in knickerbockers and gaiters or riding
breeches, the women breeched and severely coated or swathed in wide
reddish tweed capes--stood, with a scattering of umbrellas and upturned
collars, in a semi-circle on the soggy turf.
There was a baying of hounds from the direction of the stables, and the
Master swung up on a bright chestnut horse with a braided tail. A
huntsman appeared with a shuttered box, holding the fox, and an old
brown and white hound bitch, wise with many years of hunting, to follow
and establish and announce the scent. "If you are ready, Brace," the
Master said to his huntsman, "you may drop." A stable boy held the
hound, and, raising the shutter, Brace shook the fox out on the ground.
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