"It's Crabbit snuffling and Dearest throwing an orange at him," observed Darby. "Yes. Crabbit is now worrying the orange."
Crabbit chased the orange across the room, bit it viciously, chased it again, and finally left it, torn open, pulpy, just beneath the feet of the man who had thrown it at him; so that when Mr. Freyne rose gracefully to open the door, his feet slipped on the smashed-up fruit and he disappeared from view, feet foremost under the table, accidentally hitting Lancelot's foot and eliciting a yowl of anguish from his nephew.
The upheaval of Dearest George, his garments now fragrant with orange juice, was coupled with deep threats directed against Crabbit's life—deeper still, because that interested animal came and sniffed at his head when he was on the ground.
"When Crabbit dies," said Gheena, calling up her red pet, "I shall marry next day, the very next. If the Professor won't have me, Doctor Mahaffy might; I could give him a motor to drive in."
Dearest George observed something concerning drivel, but he observed it under his breath and recognized the threat. Crabbit was not to suffer. So turning to Lancelot, he crushed his nephew by remarking irritably that soldiers had no business to squeal like rabbits.
The new-comer sang to them in a thin sweet voice, which was quite sprite-like, and she danced for them lightly and prettily, but not as well as usual, because she told Gheena she was thinking of hunting.
The meet was at Castle Freyne itself next day. It was without exception the worst meet on the card, with endless hunting through endless woods, of foxes with limitations as to sound limbs.
Mr. George Freyne, with the assistance of a reticent north-country keeper, trapped rabbits and carted them in the dawn or the dusk to the distant stations, sending them in bags by the cart of a "boy" of fifty-four by the name of Looney Rooney, who could keep his mouth shut on any subject for a shilling and open it for half a crown.
This matter of the rabbits Dearest George believed to be so sacred a secret that his amazement when a three-legger was run into and chopped was most loudly voiced.
"Those hang fisher chaps trapped all round the cliffs, and of course foxes strayed out."