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 party dresses. Most of the men had turned stubborn on the subject of pink coats, but Captain Stokes-Beatty wore his handsomely. The fox—a worried and somewhat dejected-looking animal—had been shipped in a crate from the south and on being released had a way of sitting sociably in an Illinois corn field instead of leaping fleetly to cover. At the finish you had a feeling of guilt, as though you had killed a cockroach.

Dirk had told Selina about it, feeling rather magnificent. A fox hunt.

“A fox hunt! What for?”

“For! Why, what’s any fox hunt for?”

“I can’t imagine. They used to be for the purpose of ridding a fox-infested country of a nuisance. Have the foxes been bothering ’em out in Lake Forest?”

“Now, Mother, don’t be funny.” He told her about the breakfast.

“Well, but it’s so silly, Dirk. It’s smart to copy from another country the things that that country does better than we do. England does gardens and wood-fires and dogs and tweeds and walking shoes and pipes and leisure better than we do. But those luke-warm steamy breakfasts of theirs! It’s because they haven't gas, most of them. No Kansas or Nebraska farmer’s wife would stand for one of their kitchens—not for a minute. And the hired man would balk at such bacon.” She giggled.

“Oh, well, if you’re going to talk like that.”