Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

Early in the afternoon of the following Thursday I journeyed homeward in the jolting annex of a horsebox. Although it was a sort of fifth-class compartment I felt serenely contented as I occasionally put my hand through the aperture to stroke Cockbird's velvet nose. He appeared to be a docile and experienced railway traveller, and when he stepped out of the box at Dumbridge Station he had an air of knowing that he'd saved himself a twenty-mile walk. The porters eyed him with the respect due to such a well-bred animal. Having arranged for my kit-bag to be conveyed to Butley on the carrier's van, I swung myself into the saddle which I had borrowed from the Colwoods. It was a mellow afternoon for midwinter, and our appearance, as reflected in the Dumbridge shopwindows, made me feel what, in those days, I should have called "a frightful nut. " Cockbird's impeccable behaviour out hunting on the previous day had increased my complacency, and it was now an established fact that I had got hold of a top-hole performer with perfect manners.

Nobody at home was aware of what I'd been up to down in Sussex, and Dixon got the surprise of his life when we clattered into the stable-yard. So far as he was concerned it was the first really independent action of my career. When I arrived he was having his tea in his cottage above the coach-house; I could hear him clumping down the steep wooden stairs, and I sat like a statue until he emerged from the door by the harness-room with his mouth full of bread and butter. The afternoon was latening, but there was, I think, a quietly commemorative glow from the west. He stood with the sunset on his face and his final swallowing of the mouthful appeared to epitomize his astonishment. Taken aback he undoubtedly was, but his voice kept its ordinary composure. "Why, what's this? " he asked. I told him.