Then, by careful cutting, he got
it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it,
so he wrote it out again--gloomily.
This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the
message. He lost.
"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send
such a long telegram."
"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is
not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful
woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I
shall do it every time."
He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in
silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which
is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt.
There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in
which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the
sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in
Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the
reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however,
one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is
difficult indeed to imagine a finer.
In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive
English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a
distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach
one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much
better than certain human beings.
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