We had our choice given us whether we would spend our Christmas holidays with our most kind and estimable old relative, our motherÍs 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. ñFoxholme for ever, I should think indeed!î exclaimed my brother Jack, making a face which was not complimentary to Cousin Barbara. ñBut she is a good kind old soul, if she wasnÍt so pokerish and prim; and that was a dead-alive fortnight we spent with her two winters ago. I say Foxholme for ever.î
ñFoxholme for ever,î I repeated. ñOf course there couldnÍt be the thinnest slice of a shadow of doubt about the matter. ThereÍll be Cousin Peter, and Julia, and Tom and Ned Oxenberry, and Sam Barnby, and Ponto, and Hector, and Beauty, and Polly; and thereÍll be hunting, and shooting, and skating, if thereÍs a frostand of course there will be a frostand, oh, it will be such jolly fun!î
A few weeks after this we were bowling along the road to Southampton on the top of the old Telegraph, driven by Tayloras fine a specimen of a Jehu as ever took whip in handwith four white horsesa 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 makerÍs handsindeed, 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.
We had our choice given us whether we would spend our Christmas holidays with our most kind and estimable old relative, our motherÍs 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 ou...