We had our choice given us whether we would spend our Christmas holidays
with our most kind and estimable old relative, our mother's cousin, Miss
Gillespie, in Russell-square, and go to the theatre and panoramas, and
other highly edifying entertainments, or at Foxholme, in the New Forest,
with our great uncle, Sir Hugh Worsley. "Foxholme for ever, I should
think indeed!" exclaimed my brother Jack, making a face which was not
complimentary to Cousin Barbara. "But she is a good kind old soul, if
she wasn't so pokerish and prim; and that was a dead-alive fortnight we
spent with her two winters ago. I say Foxholme for ever."
"Foxholme for ever," I repeated. "Of course there couldn't be the
thinnest slice of a shadow of doubt about the matter. There'll be
Cousin Peter, and Julia, and Tom and Ned Oxenberry, and Sam Barnby, and
Ponto, and Hector, and Beauty, and Polly; and there'll be hunting, and
shooting, and skating, if there's a frost--and of course there will be a
frost--and, oh, it will be such jolly fun!"
A few weeks after this we were bowling along the road to Southampton on
the top of the old Telegraph, driven by Taylor--as fine a specimen of a
Jehu as ever took whip in hand--with four white horses--a team of which
he was justly proud. I see him now before me, his fine tall figure,
truly Roman nose, and eagle eye, looking as fit to command an army as to
drive a coach, with his white great-coat buttoned well up to his
gay-coloured handkerchief, a flower of some sort decking his breast, a
broad-brimmed beaver of white or grey, and a whip which looked as if it
had just come from the maker's hands--indeed, everything about him was
polished, from the crown of his hat to his well-fitting boots; and I
believe that no accident ever happened to the coach he drove. There was
the Independent, also a first-rate coach, and, in those days, Collier's
old coach, which carried six inside, in which we once made a journey--
that is, Jack and I--with four old ladies who ate apples and drank gin,
with the windows up, all the way, and talked about things which seemed
to interest them very much, but which soon sent us to sleep.
The sky was bright, the air fresh, with just a touch of a frosty smell
in it, and we were in exuberant spirits. We had our pea-shooters ready,
and had long been on the watch for the lumbering old vehicle, when we
saw it approaching. Didn't we pepper the passengers, greatly to their
indignation! What damage we did we could not tell, for we were by them
like a flash of lightning.
At Southampton we changed into a much slower coach, which, however,
conveyed us safely through the forest to the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst,
when, waiting in the road, we espied, to our intense delight, a
pony-carriage driven by Sam Barnby, who held the office of extra
coachman, gamekeeper, and fisherman, besides several other employments,
in the establishment at Foxholme. With us he was a prodigious
favourite, as he was with all the youngsters who went to the place; and
Sir Hugh, I know, trusted him completely, and employed him in numerous
little private services of beneficence and charity when a confidential
agent was required. He was the invariable companion of all the
youngsters in our boating, fishing, and shooting excursions.
It was dusk when we got into the carriage, and as our way lay for some
distance through the thickest part of the forest by a cross-road which
few people but Sam Barnby would have attempted to take at that late
hour, we could often scarcely distinguish the track under the thick
branches of the leafless trees which, stretching across it, formed a
trellis-work over our heads, while the thick hollies and other
evergreens formed an impenetrable wall on either side. Now and then,
when the forest opened out and the forms of the trees were rather more
clearly defined, they often assumed shapes so fantastic and strange,
that I could scarcely prevent a sort of awe creeping over me, and half
expected that the monsters I fancied I saw would move from their places
and grab up Jack, Sam Barnby, the carriage, and me, and bolt off with us
into some recess of the forest. Jack was talking away to Sam. I had
been up bolstering the night before, and had not slept a wink. Suddenly
the carriage stopped, and I heard Sam and Jack utter an exclamation. I
echoed it, and pretty loudly too; for I thought that one of the monsters
I had been dreaming about had really got hold of us.
"Hillo! who have we got here?" exclaimed Sam. "Do you hold the reins,
Master Jack, and I'll get out and see."