“I’ve told ye twenty times already,” replied Ned Adams, in a tone and manner portraying his humour, “that the devil himself couldn’t get to their heads. I did my best, and, like many o’ my betters, was beaten.”
“Well, well!” rejoined the huntsman with glee, “it’s the first time that I ever heard of a whipper-in not being able to stop a puppy, cub-hunting. Ha, ha, ha.”
“It was Trimbush, and not him,” returned the irate Ned.
“Oh!” added Will Sykes, “It was Trimbush, eh? It wasn’t worth while then, I suppose, to get to the head of one without the other, and yet, if I am told rightly, it would have been a difficult job to have separated them.”
The second whip was evidently chafed at this bantering, and turned away with a flushed cheek, and a tongue muttering anything but his prayers.
Upon entering the kennel again, all my companions came round me, and each, in turn, licked my torn ears and eyes, and were as kind and friendly as if I had been a brother to each.
“I am glad to see you back again,” observed Trimbush, raising himself from a corner of the court, and stretching his limbs. “I began to think some danger had befallen ye.”
“No thanks to you for having escaped it,” replied I, somewhat sharply.
“Oh!” rejoined the old hound, carelessly: “in a run it’s every hound for himself, and a kick for the hindmost. There’s no consideration then.”
“What did you do with the varmint?” inquired I, anxious to learn the result of our hunt.