‘I don’t fancy Poad much myself,’ said Rupert; ‘he needn’t have been so keen about catching me.’
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ said William. ‘Hunting of you, that was no more than Poad’s duty; and if he set about it like a jackape, well, some is born silly and can’t help it, and why blame the man? But the dog, ’e worn’t Poad’s duty. He exceeded about the dog, Poad did, and I don’t bear malice; but I’ll be even with him yet about that dog.’
‘How?’ asked Rupert.
‘Oh, I’ll find a way,’ said William carelessly. ‘No hurry. Acts like that act what Poad did about my Pincher, they always come home to roost—them acts do. Now then, Miss Charlotte, leave that saddle soap alone, and get along into the garden. The gates ’as been locked since eight this morning, and you’re to go through the secret way to-day, and not to go outside the garden because of that old speckled Le-o-pard.’
The three C.’s went, but Rupert lingered beside William, fingering the bright buckles of the harness and passing the smooth reins slowly through his fingers.
For some time the three C.’s were very busy in the garden, gathering heart-shaped green leaves and golden fragile daisy-like flowers.
‘I never thought,’ said Caroline earnestly, opening the brown book and sitting down on the terrace steps with a sheaf of green and yellow beside her, ‘that we should need it when I read about it in the Language Of, and in the medicine book. Look here, it says: “It is under Apollo, and the flowers and leaves thereof all leopards and their kind do fear and abhor. Wherefore if it be ſtrewn in the paths theſe fearful beaſts do frequent, they may not paſs, but ſhall turn again and go each to his own place in all meekneſs and ſubmiſsion. Indeed, it hath been held by the ancients, aye and by philoſophers of our own times, that in this herb lieth a charm to turn to water the hearts of theſe furious ſpotted great cats, and to looſe the ſtrings of their tongues, ſo that they ſpeak in the ſpeech of men, uttering ſtrange things and very wondrous. But of this the author cannot ſpeak certainly, ſince the Leopard is not native to this land unleſs it be in Northumberland and Wales where all wild things might well be hidden.”’
‘So, you see,’ said Caroline.
But Charlotte said it was all very well, only how were they to get the bane to the leopard?