We sometimes see old people affected this way--far
more enthusiastic on a subject than young ones. Few dread the aspect of
affairs so much as those who have little chance of seeing how they go.
But to the run. The cousins reproduced the story according to their
respective powers of exaggeration. One tacked on two miles, another ten,
and so it went on and on, till it reached the ears of the great Mr.
Seedeyman, the mighty WE of the country, as he sat in his den penning his
'stunners' for his market-day _Mercury_. It had then distanced the great
sea-serpent itself in length, having extended over thirty-three miles of
country, which Mr. Seedeyman reported to have been run in one hour and
forty minutes.
Pretty good going, we should say.
CHAPTER X
THE FEELER
Bag fox-hunts, be they ever so good, are but unsatisfactory things; drag
runs are, beyond all measure, unsatisfactory. After the best-managed bag
fox-hunt, there is always a sort of suppressed joy, a deadly liveliness in
the field. Those in the secret are afraid of praising it too much, lest the
secret should ooze out, and strangers suppose that all their great runs are
with bag foxes, while the mere retaking of an animal that one has had in
hand before is not calculated to arouse any very pleasurable emotions.
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