"Well, mother, say nothing about it one way or the other, to anybody.
And as you now know how the matter stands, it's no good any of us
talking more about it till I've settled what I mean to do myself."

"I shall hate her," said Sophy, "if her getting all her brother's money
changes her; but I'm sure it won't." And so the conversation ended.

Lord Ballindine had not rested in his paternal halls the second night,
before he had commenced making arrangements for a hunt breakfast, by
way of letting all his friends know that he was again among them.
And so missives, in Guss and Sophy's handwriting, were sent round
by a bare-legged little boy, to all the Mounts, Towns, and Castles,
belonging to the Dillons, Blakes, Bourkes, and Browns of the
neighbourhood, to tell them that the dogs would draw the Kelly's Court
covers at eleven o'clock on the following Tuesday morning, and that the
preparatory breakfast would be on the table at ten. This was welcome
news to the whole neighbourhood. It was only on the Sunday evening
that the sportsmen got the intimation, and very busy most of them
were on the following Monday to see that their nags and breeches
were all right--fit to work and fit to be seen. The four Dillons, of
Ballyhaunis, gave out to their grooms a large assortment of pipe-clay
and putty-powder. Bingham Blake, of Castletown, ordered a new set of
girths to his hunting saddle; and his brother Jerry, who was in no
slight degree proud of his legs, but whose nether trappings were rather
the worse from the constant work of a heavy season, went so far as to
go forth very early on the Monday morning to excite the Ballinrobe
tailor to undertake the almost impossible task of completing him a pair
of doeskin by the Tuesday morning. The work was done, and the breeches
home at Castletown by eight--though the doeskin had to be purchased in
Tuam, and an assistant artist taken away from his mother's wake, to sit