"Or went out in a submarine," suggested Darby; "that bog touches the sea."
Mr. Freyne, ignoring this, repeated accounts of various items of his own dash and skill, of his certainty of its being the line of a fox, and how by his determination he had shown General Brownlow sport.
"But they did not lose him in the bog." Darby limped to the table. "They killed at the verge of the road just as I came up."
Dearest George looked up.
"And I brought you the head," said Darby, putting the hare's astounded dead face on a plate before his host. "Daisy had it."
"The only thing to be regretted is that I may never see this hunting again," said General Brownlow, breaking the silence which followed, his eyes on the hare's pate lying close to the strawberry jam.
CHAPTER X
Christmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.
Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things, and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits of twine and wrapping paper.
Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her. She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.