“Not—unless it’s attacked!”
“But—but it does into a dog.”
“Because the dog shoots his face into the porcupine’s overcoat,” laughed the inventor’s blue-eyed daughter, going nearer to the bristling ball, which startled the pincushion into a grunting shuffle for the long grass at the roadside, where it lay, curled up into a spiky hump-back, the barbed quills erect on a three-inch tail.
“I thought we’d see one somewhere in the woods this morning,” said Lura. “They’re generally abroad early, before the dew goes.”
“And in the evening,” added Pemrose. “They ‘hole up’ during the heat of the day, so father—”
She caught her breath, with a sudden stifled feeling of being “holed up”, herself.
Was it another Dandering Kate—the figure which, suddenly appeared by the roadside—the porcupine was not the only round-shouldered thing. Looking ahead under the shadow of maples and birches, overarching, Pemrose caught sight of another.
It flashed out of the woods almost simultaneously with a prolonged shriek from Una—who had almost stumbled on to a second grunting pincushion.
It wore a woman’s riding habit, leather-faced breeches, leggings, gray coat, with a red handkerchief knotted round the neck and felt hat jammed down upon the head.
But that—that which the coat covered; Pemrose—Lura—felt their eyes water.