He felt that it would be improper to ride his horse home without giving time to the animal to drink his gruel, and therefore made his way into the little breakfast-parlor, where Molly had a cup of tea and buttered toast ready for him.  He of course told her first of the grand occurrence of the day,—­how the two packs of hounds had mixed themselves together, how violently the two masters had fallen out and had nearly flogged each other, how Mr. Harkaway had sworn horribly,—­who had never been heard to swear before,—­how a final attempt had been made to seize a second covert, and how, at last, it had come to pass that he had distinguished himself.  “Do you mean to say that you absolutely rode over the unfortunate man?” asked Molly.

“I did.  Not that the man had the worst of it,—­or very much the worse.  There we were both down, and the two horses, all in a heap together.”

“Oh, Joshua, suppose you had been kicked!”

“In that case I should have been—­kicked.”

“But a kick from an infuriated horse!”

“There wasn’t much infuriation about him.  The man had ridden all that out of the beast.”

“You are sure to laugh at me, Joshua, because I think what terrible things might have happened to you.  Why do you go putting yourself so forward in every danger, now that you have got somebody else to depend upon you and to care for you?  It’s very, very wrong.”

“Somebody had to do it, Molly.  It was most important, in the interests of hunting generally, that those hounds should not have been allowed to get into that covert.  I don’t think that outsiders ever understand how essential it is to maintain your rights.  It isn’t as though it were an individual.  The whole county may depend upon it.”

“Why shouldn’t it be some man who hasn’t got a young woman to look after?” said Molly, half laughing and half crying.

“It’s the man who first gets there who ought to do it,” said Joshua.  “A man can’t stop to remember whether he has got a young woman or not.”

“I don’t think you ever want to remember.”  Then that little quarrel was brought to the usual end with the usual blandishments, and Joshua went on to discuss with her that other source of trouble, her brother’s fall.  “Harry is awfully cut up,” said the brewer.

“You mean these affairs about his uncle?”

“Yes.  It isn’t only the money he feels, or the property, but people look askew at him.  You ought all of you to be very kind to him.”

“I am sure we are.”

“There is something in it to vex him.  That stupid old fool, your uncle—­I beg your pardon, you know, for speaking of him in that way—­”

“He is a stupid old fool.”

“Is behaving very badly.  I don’t know whether he shouldn’t be treated as I did that fellow up at the covert.”

“Ride over him?”

“Something of that kind.  Of course Harry is sore about it, and when a man is sore he frets at a thing like that more than he ought to do.  As for that aunt of mine at Buntingford, there seems to be some hitch in it.  I should have said she’d have married the Old Gentleman had he asked her.”