“I pretended to want to save it,” she answered, honestly enough, “as it was so glaringly out of season; but I was better pleased to see it lolled. However, you can both witness that I couldn’t help it: Prince was determined to have her; and he clutched her by the back, and killed her in a minute! Wasn’t it a noble chase?”
“Very! for a young lady after a leveret.”
There was a quiet sarcasm in the tone of his reply which was not lost upon her; she shrugged her shoulders, and, turning away with a significant “Humph!” asked me how I had enjoyed the fun. I replied that I saw no fun in the matter; but admitted that I had not observed the transaction very narrowly.
“Didn’t you see how it doubled—just like an old hare? and didn’t you hear it scream?”
“I’m happy to say I did not.”
“It cried out just like a child.”
“Poor little thing! What will you do with it?”
“Come along—I shall leave it in the first house we come to. I don’t want to take it home, for fear papa should scold me for letting the dog kill it.”
Mr. Weston was now gone, and we too went on our way; but as we returned, after having deposited the hare in a farm-house, and demolished some spice-cake and currant-wine in exchange, we met him returning also from the execution of his mission, whatever it might be. He carried in his hand a cluster of beautiful bluebells, which he offered to me; observing, with a smile, that though he had seen so little of me for the last two months, he had not forgotten that bluebells were numbered among my favourite flowers. It was done as a simple act of goodwill, without compliment or remarkable courtesy, or any look that could be construed into “reverential, tender adoration” (vide Rosalie Murray); but still, it was something to find my unimportant saying so well remembered: it was something that he had noticed so accurately the time I had ceased to be visible.
“I was told,” said he, “that you were a perfect bookworm, Miss Grey: so completely absorbed in your studies that you were lost to every other pleasure.”