The First Whip by Will H Ogilvie (1915)

The First Whip

As I wandered home by Hedworth Combe I heard a lone horse whinny, And saw on the hill stand statue-still at the top of the old oak spinney.  A rough haired hack, with a girl on his back – And ‘Hounds!’ I said – ‘for a guinea!’

The wind blew chill over Larchley Hill, And it couldn’t have blown much colder; her nose was blue, And her pigtails two hung damply over her shoulder; she might have been ten, or – guessing again – she might have been twelve months older.

To a tight pink lip she pressed her whip by way of imposing quiet; I bowed my head to the word unsaid, accepting the lady’s fiat, and noted the while her Belvoir style as she rated a hound for riot.

A lean form leapt o’er the fence and crept through the ditch with his thiefs heart quaking, but the face of the maid no hint betrayed that she noticed the brambles shaking, till she saw him clear of her one wild fear – the chance of his backward breaking.

Then dainty and neat she rose in her seat that the better her eyes might follow where a shadow of brown over Larchley Down launched out like a driving swallow; and she quickened his speed through bracken and weed with a regular Pytchley holloa!

Raging they came like a torrent of flame – there were nineteen couple and over, and a huntsman grey who blew them away with the note of a true hound-lover, while his whip sat back on her rough old hack and called to the last in covert.

Then cramming down flat her quaint little hat, and shaking the old horse together, she was off like a bird, and the last that I heard was a ‘For’ard!’ that died in the heather as she took up her place at the tail of the chase like a ten-season lord of the leather.