One building is given over to the
kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each
is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house--a house full of trophies,
hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In
a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf,
and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified
crowd.
For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the
type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose
costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those
publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail
coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials
"F.F.V."--standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for
"First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and
heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and
scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist
canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters
were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept
arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one
saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby
hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat.
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