"I'm sorry for my pretty Auna that she has to pass up here," declared Margery. "She must be properly glad to wind away down into our beautiful valley and come to Red House and Shipley Bridge."
"You should see Auna Head," he answered,—"that's where she rises, in a desert of bog and cotton grass under Ryder's Hill. Lonesome there if you like. Hardly will you hear a bee booming and never see colt or head of kine. Nothing but the pad marks of a fox and the sweep of his brush in the mud. We'll ride up some Sunday when I've got your pony. Now let's go in, and you'll see two men that are so nearly content as ever I knew men to be, for all their loneliness. Father and son they are."
"I know them well enough," she answered, "I've often met 'em coming in with rabbits when I was exercising the dogs."
"The deuce you have! And never told me?"
She smiled at him.
"Benny Veale's a good-looking chap, and his father's a fine old man and kindly."
"I'm hearing things," exclaimed Jacob.
"You get to talk to a lot of people out with the puppies. Everybody's so interested in them."
"And interested in you, I reckon. Well, you won't walk puppies and talk to strangers much longer."
Now came a riot of life in the shape of the warrener's dogs. Half a dozen lean, wiry creatures, barking and gambolling, ran before a man. They worked for him on the warren, and the dead horse represented meals to come. They wagged their tails and saluted the Irish terriers in friendship. Benny Veale followed them—a sun-tanned, red lad in a blue sailor's jersey and long boots. He was carrying a dozen dead rabbits, but threw them down and saluted the visitors.