“Your pets!” said the vicar, as he peered into the room, felt their hot breath on his face, and listened to their hungry growling, “Well, Mitchell, you have an odd taste in your choice of domestic favorites. If my inclination lay in the direction of a couple of fierce hounds like that, I think I should consider that old kennel in the back garden a near enough abode for them.”
“What, for friends I count upon to do me a great service!” exclaimed Ned, grimly. “Oh, no! my hounds are already more to me than his pig is to an Irishman. No place that’s not good enough for me is good enough for them. Besides, if they were put into the kennel they would be almost close under some of your windows, and would disturb you and your good lady at night. They make more than a lapdog’s yapping when they are uncomfortable, I can tell you,” he added, turning with admiration to his hounds, who were snapping savagely at each other, and sniffing the air with dilated nostrils.
“They seem to be hungry,” said the vicar, who, if he did not share their master’s admiration, was much interested in the brutes.
“Well, which of us wouldn’t be, if he’d had nothing to eat all day? It’s a part of their education, that,” he went on, as he drew back from the window and took up an iron spade which stood inside the little porch. “Now I’m going to show you how accomplished they are, if you care to see. If I bury an old bone with next to no flesh on it in any part of this garden, they’ll hunt it up. That is, they will if they answer to the warranty I had with them. That’s the accomplishment I bought them for.”
“Dear me, very curious,” murmured the vicar, with great interest. “And this is your first trial of them?”
“Yes. I only brought them back with me in the small hours this morning, and they’ve been without food ever since.”
“And are you sure of getting them out of that room without their making a meal of you?”
“I must chance that. I didn’t buy them for lapdogs, and I think I can manage them. Anyhow, I intend to try. I suppose, vicar, you’ve no mind to help me,” he added, rather maliciously, as he turned to go into the cottage. “It isn’t work for gentlemen of your cloth, I know. I don’t suppose anything fiercer than a toy terrier is allowed by the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
“There’s no mention of bloodhounds in them, certainly; but I’m willing to help you all the same, if I can,” said the vicar, mildly, preparing to follow his host into the cottage.
Ned Mitchell looked surprised. Then he glanced rather contemptuously from the plump hands and neat white cuffs to the handsome, placid pink face, and said, drily—