“So my chap and Ruddle goes along werry sociable, only every now and then my chap ketches him a cocking one of his old gimlet eyes round at him, while he looked as knowing and deep as an old dog-fox. By and by they gets to a field, and old Ruddle tells my chap to stop by the hedge, and he did, while Ruddle goes looking about a bit slowly and quietly, and last of all he mounts up on a gate and stands with his hand over his hyes. Last of all he walks quietly right out into the middle of the pasture and stoops down, picks up a hare, and holds it kicking and struggling by the ears, when he hugs it up on his arm strokin’ on it like you’d see a little girl with a kitten.
“My chap feels ready to burst himself with delight to see how old Ruddle had fallen into the trap. First-rate it was, you know—taking a hare in open daylight, and in sight of a witness. So he scuffles up to him, looking as innocent all the time as a babby, and he says to him, he says—
“‘My, what a fine un! I never thought as there was another one in England could ha’ done that ’ere. You air a deep ’un,’ he says, trying hard not to grin. ‘But aintcher going to kill it?’
“A nasty foxy warming, not he though, for when my chap says, says he, ‘Aintcher going to kill it?’
“‘What,’ he says, ‘kill the pooty creetur! Oh, no; poor soft pussy, I wouldn’t hurt it; let it go, poor thing.’
“When if he didn’t put it down and let it dart off like a shot, while my chap stood dumbfounded, and staring with his mouth half open, till Ruddle tipped him a wink, and went off and left him. No, sir, there ain’t no taking that chap nohow, and they do say it was his hand that fired the shot as killed Squire Todd’s keeper in Bunkin’s Spinney.”
Three nights after Christmas was mild and open, and I was watching a busy little set of fingers prepare the tea, while my uncle was napping in his easy-chair, with a yellow silk handkerchief spread over his face. I had been whispering very earnestly, while all my impressive words had been treated as if airy nothings; and more than once I had been most decidedly snubbed. I was at last sitting with a very lachrymose countenance, looking appealingly at the stern little tyrant, who would keep looking so bewilderingly pretty by trying to frown with a beautiful little white brow that would not wrinkle, when the parlour-maid came up and announced Browsem.
“No, sir,” muttered my uncle; “I’ll put a stop—stop—” the rest was inaudible.
“The keeper waits to see you, uncle dear,” whispered his late sister’s child, in her soft kittenish way.
“Keeper, sir; yes, sir, I’ll give him—Bless my heart, Jenny,” exclaimed the old gentleman starting up, dragging off his handkerchief and bringing the hair down over his forehead; “bless my heart, Jenny, why I was almost asleep.”