"Do you go with your terrier to kill rats?" he inquired, with the slightest tone of sarcasm in his voice.
"Oh, no," replied the girl, "but I thought you would like to. Most boys are amused by it, they call it sport, and you know the rats must be killed or we should have them running behind the wainscot of all the rooms in the house, and the gamekeeper would not be able to rear the young pheasants, and we should have no chickens nor pigeons, nor anything of the kind."
"Why, Cousin Anna," said the boy, "have you a Scotch governess, and does she make you give a reason for every thing, and give you her reason in return? That's what Dr. Strickland does with me. It tires me dreadfully, and I don't see what use it is, for I always know things without reasoning about them; they come to me of themselves."
Anna, in her eagerness to show kindness to the guest of the house, and to divert what seemed to her his sad thoughts, did not stop to make any reply, but rose and hastily crossed over to one of the bookcases, bringing back in her arms a large folio, full of colored illustrations of field sports.
"Now, Cousin Cecil," said she, drawing up a chair close by the side of his, and laying the folio open upon her lap, "this will please you I am sure; this is not about rats, but thorough-bred horses and dogs, stag-hounds and fox-hounds. Did you ever hear that our grandfather kept a pack of fox-hounds here, that is a hundred dogs you know. I will take you to the kennels and the huntman's lodge some day soon."
Cecil did not know that a hundred dogs made a pack, for he had passed all his life in India, until a few months previous to his coming to the manor house.
"Look at this picture of coursing, here is another of hawking, and now see these otter hounds."
"The landscape is beautiful," said the boy. "I like the soft gray light on those distant hills in the background, but I do not care about pictures of horses and dogs; please take them away. I like to see the animals moving in the fields, but I think all this kind of sport is very cruel."
This was said in an extremely gentle way, and at the same time with an inflection of the voice which made a deep impression upon his listener. I wonder what I can do to amuse him, thought Anna; I don't suppose he would care to look at my last piece of embroidery, or hear how many sonatas I can play; I am afraid he is sorry he came here, perhaps he was thinking of the Himalaya mountains, when he said he liked those hills in the picture. Most boys like out-door amusements, she again thought to herself, and acting upon the idea of the moment.
"Cecil," said she, "we have two capital ponies, we will go out in the forenoon to-morrow if you like, for we are to have a holiday from our studies all day, in honor of your coming here."