Algy held up his hand.
"I know, I know. But some people who have not enjoyed your harrowing Colonial experience are a trifle sceptical. Listen. Last evening, as I was driving home with the old man through Vaux-le-Tour, whom should I see but you two sportsmen out on the hillside riding down a hare, followed at some distance by three mounted bargees——"
"The Padre, the Field Cashier and O.C. Bugs," Albert Edward explained. "We're making men of 'em. Go on."
—"followed at a still greater distance," continued Algy, "by a raging band of mongrels. By the way, don't you get your hunt the wrong way round, the cart before the horse, so to speak? I always thought it customary for the hounds to go first."
"In some cases the hare wouldn't know it was being hunted if they did," said I. "This is one of them. Forge ahead."
"Well, so far so good; the old gent was drowsing in his corner and there was no harm done."
"So you gave him a dig in the ribs, I suppose, and bleated, 'Oh, look at naughty boys chasing ickle bunny wabbit!'" sneered Albert Edward.
Algy wagged his head. "Not me. You woke him up yourself, my son, by tootling on your little tin trumpet. He heard it through his dreams, shot up with a 'Good Lord, what's that?' popped his head out of the window and saw the brave cavalcade reeling out along the sky-line like a comic movie. He drank in the busy scene, then turned to me and said——"
Albert Edward interrupted. "I know exactly what he said. He said, 'Algy, me boy, that's the spirit. Vive le sport! How it reminds us of our young days in the Peninsular! Oft-times has our cousin of Wellington remarked to us how Waterloo was won on the playing——'"
Algy cut off the flow and continued with his piece. "He said to me, 'God bless my soul, if those young devils aren't galloping a hare!' I said, 'Sir, they maintain that they are doing good work by averting a threatened plague of rodents, a state of affairs which has proved very detrimental to the Anti-podes.'