“We have our orders,” he remarked. “I suppose we’d better go.”
“It’s one of the popular sports up here,” said Vane. “You may as well see it.”
They set out a few minutes later, accompanied by Evelyn, while Mabel hurried on in front and reproached them for their tardiness.
At length, after crossing several wet fields, they came into a rushy meadow on the edge of the river, which spread out into a wide pool, fringed with alders which had not yet lost their leaves and the barer withes of osiers. There was a swift stream at the head of it, and a long rippling shallow at the tail, and a very mixed company was scattered along the bank and in the water.
A red-coated man with whip and horn stood in the tail outflow, and three or four more with poles in their hands were spread out across the stream behind him. These and one or two in the head stream appeared by their dress to belong to the hunt, but the rest, among whom were a few women, were attired in everyday garments and of different walks in life: artisans, labourers, people of leisure, and a belated tourist or two.
Three or four big hounds were swimming aimlessly up and down the pool; a dozen more or thereabouts trotted to and fro along the water’s edge, stopping to sniff and give tongue in an uncertain manner now and then; but there was no sign of an otter.
Carroll looked round with a smile when his companions stopped. “There’ll be very little work done in this neighbourhood to-day,” he said. “I’d no idea there were so many folks in the valley with time to spare. The only thing that’s missing is the beast they’re after.”
“An otter is an almost invisible creature,” Evelyn explained, “You very seldom see one, unless it’s hard pressed by the dogs. There are a good many in the river, but even the trout fishers, who are about at sunrise in the hot weather and wade in the dusk, rarely come across them. Are you going to take a share in the hunt?”
“No,” replied Carroll, glancing humorously at his pole. “I don’t know what I brought this thing for, unless it was because Mopsy sent me for it. I’d sooner stay and watch with you. Splashing through a river after a little beast which I don’t suppose they’d let an outsider kill doesn’t interest me, and I don’t see why I should want to kill it, anyway. Some of you English people have sporting ideas I can’t understand. I struck a young man the other day—a well-educated man by the look of him—who was spending the afternoon happily with a ferret by a corn stack, killing rats with a club. He seemed uncommonly pleased with himself because he’d got four of them.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mabel, “you’re as bad as the silly people who call killing things cruelty. I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”