An ignorant foreign body--and, after all, everyone is a foreigner
somewhere and ignorant about something--once committed the enormity of
asking his host, just back from cub-hunting, whether the hedgerows,
when he went out of a morning, were not quite lovely with those dewy
cobwebs which the French call Veils of the Virgin. It had to be
explained that such a sight was the most unwelcome you could imagine,
since it was a sure sign there would be no scent. The poor foreigner
was duly crestfallen, as happens whenever one has nearly spoilt a
friend's property through some piece of blundering.
But the blunder struck me as oddly symbolical. Are we not most of us
pursuing for our pleasure, though sometimes at risk of our necks, a
fox of some kind: worth nothing as meat, little as fur, good only to
gallop after, and whose unclean scent is incompatible with those
sparkling gossamers flung, for everyone's delight, over gorse and
hedgerow?
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