and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes; he
had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, and had a fine voice for
a view-hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a horn with
sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had come to his
property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with a clear
income of fourteen thousand a year.

Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground, about
a year after Mr Gresham's last contest for the county, it seemed to all
parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds
should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except the Lady
Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire himself.

All this time he was already considerable encumbered. He had spent
much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in
those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the
great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been
enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or
three children to live in London and keep up their country family
mansion; but then the De Courcys were very great people, and Lady
Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her
sister-in-law the countess lived; now Lord de Courcy had much more than
fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with their
vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which
gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their
income and find it impossible to reduce their establishments as to live
much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr Gresham
was already a poor man.

Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella,