It was high if premature summer; the sky was blue, the hedges and the grass were growing almost audibly, the birds sang, the sun blazed, and, to lighten the burden, I walked up two or three hills without the faintest enthusiasm.
Just after the top of the last hill, when I had again resumed my seat (at the risk once more of lifting the pony into the zenith), the ladies simultaneously uttered a shrill cry of dismay.
"Look!" they exclaimed; "there's Bunty!"
I looked, and beheld in the road before us a small West Highland terrier, as white as a recent ratting foray in a wet ditch would allow.
"Bunty! Bunty! you wicked dog!" they cried; "how dare you go hunting?"
To this question Bunty made no other reply than to subside under the hedge, where a little shade was to be had, in an attitude of exhaustion tempered by wariness.
"How very naughty!" said my hostess. "I left her in the house."
"Yes," said the daughter, "and if she's going to go off hunting like this what on earth shall we do? There'll be complaints from every one. She's never done it before."
"Come, Bunty!" said my hostess, in the wheedling tones of dog-owners whose dogs notoriously obey their slightest word. But Bunty sat tight.
"If we drive on perhaps she'll follow," said the daughter, and we drove on a few yards; but Bunty did not move.