"
"And have you never observed the miserable skin-and-bone plight of my
lord's hounds?"
"They are not thinner, Charles says, than most hounds in good training:
when dogs get fat, they become lazy, lose the faculty of finding game,
and the inclination of bringing it down."
"Dogs it is true, ought not to be pampered and surfeited, but they ought
to be _fed_." Upon this, Annette would vehemently maintain that fed they
were, and amply, as she had seen Elliott cut up their meat; whilst the
friendly newsmonger would charitably hint, that her intended knew as
well as most men how to turn an _honest_ penny, by cheating the dogs of
their food, and selling it elsewhere.
Annette cared little for inuendos which she attributed chiefly to malice
and ill-nature. None are so difficult to convince as those who are
obstinately deaf to conviction, and there is an idolatry of affection
which sometimes burns fonder and deeper, as its object is contemned and
despised by the world. Annette had also some idea, that these, and other
reports to the prejudice of Charles, originated with an unsuccessful
rival, though poor William Curry, amiable, single-minded, and
good-humoured as he was, never breathed in her presence, a syllable to
the disparagement of Elliott.
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