Spinney, Tom,« says the Baronet. »Farmer Mangle tells me there are
two foxes in it.« Tom blows his horn and trots off, followed by the pack, by the
whips, by the young gents from Winchester, by the farmers of the neighbourhood,
by the labourers of the parish on foot, with whom the day is a great holiday;
Sir Huddleston bringing up the rear with Colonel Crawley, and the whole cortége
disappears down the avenue.
    The Reverend Bute Crawley, who has been too modest to appear at the public
meet before his nephew's windows, and whom Tom Moody remembers forty years back
a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumping the widest brooks, and
larking over the newest gates in the country - his Reverence, we say, happens to
trot out from the Rectory Lane on his powerful black horse, just as Sir
Huddleston passes; he joins the worthy Baronet. Hounds and horsemen disappear,
and little Rawdon remains on the door-steps, wondering and happy.
    During the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he had got
no special liking for his uncle - always awful and cold, and locked up in his
study, plunged in justice business and surrounded by bailiffs and farmers - has
gained the good graces of his married and maiden aunts, of the two little folks
of the Hall, and of Jim of the Rectory, whom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his
addresses to one of the young ladies, with an understanding, doubtless, that he
shall be presented to the living when it shall be vacated by his fox-hunting old
sire. Jim has given up that sport himself, and confines himself to a little
harmless duck or snipe shooting, or a little quiet trifling with the rats during
the Christmas holidays, after which he will return to the University, and try
and not be plucked, once more. He has already eschewed green coats, red
neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, and is preparing himself for a change
in his condition. In this cheap and thrifty way Sir Pitt tries to pay off his
debt to his family.
 
Also before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed up courage
enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers, and for no less a sum
than a hundred pounds; an act which caused Sir Pitt cruel pangs at first, but
which made him glow afterwards to think himself one of the most generous of men.
Rawdon and his son went away with the utmost heaviness of heart. Becky and the
ladies parted with some alacrity, however, and our friend returned to