Bob had rushed to see about the setter. He lay down at some distance off, with his nose between his paws, and the setter set, and finally sat.
“Not a yard nearer, Mr Sportsman, if you please,” said Bob; “I’m a rough ’un to look at, and a tough ’un to tackle. I suppose you call yourself a gentleman’s dog; you live in marble halls, sleep on skins, and drink from a silver saucer. I’m only a poor man’s doggie; I sleep where I can, eat what I can get, and drink from bucket or brook. But I love my master maybe more than you love yours. Yonder is my home, and yonder is our cat in the door of it; but my humble home is my master’s castle. Just try to come a yard or two nearer, if you’re tired of your silly life.”
But Dash preferred to stay where he was.
Murrams the cat behaved with the utmost dignity and indifference. He sat in the doorway washing his face, with dreamy, half-shut eyes. To have seen him you would have said that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, so cool was he; yet if Mr Dash had come round that way, Murrams would have mounted his back and never ceased clawing the dog till he had ridden him half a mile at least from Hangman’s Hall.
It wasn’t, however, until the visitors had taken their departure that the grand jubilee commenced.
“They’re gone!” said Bob, running up and licking the pussy’s ear. “That’s a jolly good job!”
“They’re gone!” said pussy in reply, as he rubbed shoulders with Bob.
“They’re gone!” cried the crane, hopping madly round the pair of them.
And as she nestled closer in her brother’s arms, Babs sighed and said just the same thing.
“Hurrah!” cried Ransey Tansey; “let’s run off to the woods.”