“Etiquette of huntin’!” Larry reproved her gravely, fumbling with the chain, and placidly ignoring the shrieks in rear, faint but pursuing. “Looks a bit wantin’ in feelin’, perhaps, but it’s etiquette, all the same. Leave a gate ajar, an’ you’ll have all the field scuttlin’ through without so much as givin’ it a hitch. That’s how a huntin’ crowd gets itself disliked. An’ you needn’t get worryin’ about hounds, I assure you. They’re certain to lose her in the long covert. They always do.”
They did; and there followed a long check, during which Rishwald resumed his private chase with a discourse upon snuff-boxes, much to Larry’s disgust, as he was finding Mrs. Slinker distinctly “soothin’,” he informed Deborah, aside.
“Of course I’m not sayin’ she’s in the same street with you, Debbie dear!” he added apologetically, “but she’s so sportin’—you do think she’s sportin’, don’t you? An’ she’s simply burstin’ with good sense, almost as bad as old Grange. She makes you feel the world’s so clinkin’ all right, doesn’t she? I expect that’s why Slinker took a fancy to her. Slinker was always pessimistin’ about things. Lyndesays are generally grousin’ an’ wantin’ a leg-up.”
“Yes, we’re a depressing crowd,” Deb answered cheerfully. “We want a desperate amount of encouragement. And you needn’t apologise, Larry. I admire Mrs. Stanley myself.”
They moved along by Quinfell and into Winderwath, and there they chopped a hare in the first five minutes. Mrs. Slinker instantly disappeared round the nearest corner, her fingers in her ears, but Deb stood rigidly where she was, though Callander saw the hand on the ashplant quiver when the quarry screamed.
“Mrs. Stanley said we were all brutes, both hounds and men,” he observed. “Is that your opinion, Miss Lyndesay?”
“I suppose so,” Deb said slowly. “I’d choose a sharp death in the open, myself, rather than lingering misery in a sick-room. But a hare is so soft and so—afraid——” She stopped, shutting her lips determinedly. This man was getting to know too much.
Larry came up with a long face and an air of having been warned off the premises.
“Mrs. Stanley’s been callin’ me names!” he informed them, desperately wounded. “Says I thoroughly enjoyed seein’ the poor brute chopped! It’s very disheartenin’. I’m afraid she’s not as sportin’ as I thought. I offered to borrow a herrin’ an’ let hounds have a shot at collarin’ me, just to see how it felt, but she thought I was simply foolin’. Rishwald’s car’s followin’, an’ he’s goin’ to take her home—just at lunch-time, too! Laker will be ravin’. It’s very upsettin’.”
The lunch-cart was in the lane close by, with the butler already at work, the field standing about in groups or scattered haphazard on wall or bank. Christian seized Deborah as she looked longingly towards the near plantation.