Bragg soon saw he had a greenhorn to deal with, and treated Puff accordingly.  If a ‘perfect servant’ is only to begot out of the establishments of the great, Mr. Bragg might be looked upon as a paragon of perfection, and now combined in his own person all the bad practices of all the places he had been in.  Having ‘accepted Mr. Puffington’s situation,’ as the elegant phraseology of servitude goes, he considered that Mr. Puffington had nothing more to do with the hounds, and that any interference in ‘his department’ was a piece of impertinence.  Puffington felt like a man who has bought a good horse, but which he finds on riding is rather more of a horse than he likes.  He had no doubt that Bragg was a good man, but he thought he was rather more of a gentleman than he required.  On the other hand, Mr. Bragg’s opinion of his master may be gleaned from the following letter which he wrote to his successor, Mr. Brick, at Lord Reynard’s: 

    ’HANBY HOUSE, SWILLINGFORD.

    ’DEAR BRICK,

’If your old man is done daffling with your draft, I should like to have the pick of it.  I’m with one Mr. Puffington, a city gent.  His father was a great confectioner in the Poultry, just by the Mansion House, and made his money out of Lord Mares.  I shall only stay with him till I can get myself suited in the rank of life in which I have been accustomed to move; but in the meantime I consider it necessary for my own credit to do things as they should be.  You know my sort of hound; good shoulders, deep chests, strong loins, straight legs, round feet, with plenty of bone all over.  I hate a weedy animal; a small hound, light of bone, is only fit to hunt a kat in a kitchen.

’I shall also want a couple of whips—­not fellows like waiters from Crawley’s hotel, but light, active men, not boys.  I’ll have nothin’ to do with boys; every boy requires a man to look arter him.  No; a couple of short, light, active men—­say from five-and-twenty to thirty, with bow-legs and good cheery voices, as nearly of the same make as you can find them.  I shall not give them large wage, you know; but they will have opportunities of improving themselves under me, and qualifying themselves for high places.  But mind, they must be steady—­I’ll keep no unsteady servants; the first act of drunkenness, with me, is the last.

’I shall also want a second horseman; and here I wouldn’t mind a mute boy who could keep his elbows down and never touch the curb; but he must be bred in the line; a huntsman’s second horseman is a critical article, and the sporting world must not be put in mourning for Dick Bragg.  The lad will have to clean my boots, and wait at table when I have company—­yourself, for instance.