“We didn’t leave,” replied my friend deliberately, and dropping his words like peas from his jaws, “even his head.”
“But why was this done?” inquired I.
“The simplicity of infancy is truly refreshing!” observed Trimbush. “There’s an adage, that a dead dog may tell how he was killed,” continued he; “but an eaten one never can. Do you comprehend?”
“Perfectly,” responded I.
“From what I have said,” he resumed, “you must now be aware of the policy of neither being overbearing to your fellows, nor too tame or submissive to them. I am now master here, and this is the rule I both teach and observe.”
“And a very good one too,” I remarked; “but don’t let me interrupt you. Pray proceed.”
“You would find out in time,” resumed Trimbush, “but may as well profit by my experience, and learn it at once, that most men who go with us to the covert-side know little about hunting and less about hounds. So long as their patience is not cramped with drawing blanks, and we go the pace with heads up and sterns down, they are satisfied, and take little further interest in us. Not one in fifty can tell even what the points of a hound are; and as for understanding anything about our habits and dispositions, they think that we are as much alike as cherries upon the same stalk. So far, however, from that being the case, we differ from each other in every respect as much as man to man engaged in the same pursuit, and frequently inherit the peculiarities of our fathers and mothers, as they do. You see that black-and-tan hound basking in the sun?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Valentine. Now, his father, who was killed from a kick three years ago, always trotted to and from kennel just under the huntsman’s off stirrup, and Valentine does precisely the same. There’s Graceful, a bitch in the next court—she invariably is the first home and the last to covert, and her mother did the like before her.”
“That appears to be innate laziness,” I observed.