The Senator still held his own, and, before the question was settled between Jack and Jemima, had told the company that no Englishman knew how to ride, and that the only seat fit for a man on horseback was that suited for the pacing horses of California and Mexico.

Then he assured Sir John Purefoy that eighty miles a day was no great journey for a pacing horse, with a man of fourteen stone and a saddle and accoutrements weighing four more.

The Major's countenance, when the Senator declared that no Englishman could ride, was a sight worth seeing.
That evening, even in the drawing-room, the conversation was chiefly about horses and hunting, and those terrible enemies Goarly and Scrobby.

Lady Penwether and Miss Penge who didn't hunt were distantly civil to Lady Augustus of whom of course a woman so much in the world as Lady Penwether knew something.

Lady Penwether had shrugged her shoulders when consulted as to these special guests and had expressed a hope that Rufford "wasn't going to make a goose of himself." But she was fond of her brother and as both Lady Purefoy and Miss Penge were special friends of hers, and as she had also been allowed to invite a couple of Godolphin's girls to whom she wished to be civil, she did as she was asked.