Feeling somewhat humbled at this reply, and smarting under the advantage taken of me the day before, I added sharply, “There was no teaching me to instruct you how to obtain all the credit of the finish yesterday.”
“Hear, hear, hear,” said one of our companions called Chancellor.
“At him again!” exclaimed a spaded bitch named Levity, and of the same age as myself. “Take a suck at the lemon, and at him again!”
“You’re a sharp lot,” replied the old hound, with a mingled look of contempt and indifference, “a very sharp lot indeed. I couldn’t think,” he continued, turning to me, “what made the tip of your stern curl over your head and tickle your nose until now. I have heard of a French poodle’s being so stiff in the bend that he couldn’t get his hind legs to the ground; but hang me if your conceit is not about a match for his.”
“But you must admit,” observed Chancellor, “that without him we should not have broken up our fox yesterday.”
“Well!” returned Trimbush, “and supposing I do admit it, what then?”
“You should not have snatched the honour from him,” replied Levity.
“Honour?” rejoined Trimbush. “Pooh! The honour was already gained before we mouthed the fox. We all like blood for the finish—men as well as hounds—but it does not follow that there may not be quite as much credit due to both without a who-whoop as with it. For instance,” continued he, “if that youngster Ringwood had had his nose to the ground—as he should have done the moment the fox was lost to view, instead of occupying himself by stargazing—we should, in all probability, have lost our fox. What would have caused us to have done so? A mere accident, for which no one would have been to blame. And what, let me ask, enabled us to obtain a more desirable result? Just as accidental a circumstance. Honour? Fudge!”
“At any rate,” said Chancellor, “I heard everybody praising what they called your sagacity for discovering the fox in the tree.”
“It’s the way with those fools of men,” replied Trimbush. “They often laud that in us which deserves no praise whatever, and pass by in silence some of our most remarkable accomplishments.”