We had not gone a dozen yards down the lane when we heard footsteps and a whistle behind us, and a scrabbling and whining, and a gentleman with two fox-terriers had called a halt just by the place where we had laid low the ‘little red rover’.
The gentleman stood in the lane, but the dogs were digging—we could see their tails wagging and see the dust fly. And we SAW WHERE. We ran back.
‘Oh, please, do stop your dogs digging there!’ Alice said.
The gentleman said ‘Why?’
‘Because we’ve just had a funeral, and that’s the grave.’
The gentleman whistled, but the fox-terriers were not trained like Pincher, who was brought up by Oswald. The gentleman took a stride through the hedge gap.
‘What have you been burying—pet dicky bird, eh?’ said the gentleman, kindly. He had riding breeches and white whiskers.
We did not answer, because now, for the first time, it came over all of us, in a rush of blushes and uncomfortableness, that burying a fox is a suspicious act. I don’t know why we felt this, but we did.
Noel said dreamily—
‘We found his murdered body in the wood,
And dug a grave by which the mourners stood.’