In
consideration of good fare, good wine, a good mount in the
hunting-field, excellent shooting, and of a loan from the host whenever
they were without funds, men even of good position were found to "put
up" very good-naturedly with the eccentricities of the master of
Crompton, and he had his house full half the year. It is not to be
wondered at, therefore, that his servants were found willing to compound
for some occasional ill usage, in return for general laxity of rule, and
many unconsidered trifles in the way of perquisites. His huntsmen and
whips got now and then a severe beating; his grooms found it very
inconvenient when "Squire" took it into his mad head to sally forth on
horseback across country by moonlight; and still worse, when he would
have the whole stud out, and set every servant in his employ, not
excepting his fat French cook, in the saddle, to see how they would
comport themselves under the unaccustomed excitement of a steeple-chase.
But upon the whole, the retainers at Crompton had an easy berth of it,
and seldom voluntarily took their discharge.
Perhaps the best situations, as being less liable to the _per contras_
in the shape of the master's passionate outbursts, were those of the
park-keepers, of whom old Walter Grange was one. He was a bachelor, as
almost all of them were.
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