BOTH STARTED IN CHASE OF IT
Half an hour later both boys straggled into the house, panting and dusty, and flung themselves upon the floor, when their aunt, with that weakness peculiar to the woman who is not also a mother, asked them where they had been, why they were out of breath, how they came by so much dust on their clothes, and why they were so cross. Budge replied, with a heavy sigh:
“Big folks don’t know much about little folks’s troubles.”
“Bad old hoppergrass, just kept a-goin’ wherever he wanted to, an’ never comed under my hat,” complained Toddie.
“Perhaps he knew it would not be best for you to have him, Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton. “What would you have done with him if you had succeeded in catching him?”
“Tookted his hind hoppers off,” said Toddie, promptly.
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton. “What would you have done that for?”
“So’s he’d fly,” said Toddie. “The idea of anybody wif wings goin’ awound on their hoppersh! How’d you like it if I had wings, an’ only trotted and jumped instead of flied?”
“My dear little boy,” said Mrs. Burton, taking her nephew on her lap, “you must know that it’s very wrong to hurt animals in that way. They are just as the Lord made them, and just as he wants them to be.”
“All animals?” asked Toddie.