"I have just bought a new automobile," he went on, "and I want to try it out to-day. I will be right out in a hurry."
"Oh, say, Horace, now that's another thing. I have never ridden in one of those things; they aren't bred right, don't like their gait; and loving horses as I do, confound them, I've got religious scruples on the subject. Now you come out here in the thing and I will have the little mare and the buggy hooked up, a good lunch and the setters in, and—"
I heard him laugh derisively. "Nonsense! Why, man, we're going way out beyond you on the Lebanon pike—ten miles—and we want to go in a hurry. I'll have you there in thirty minutes. Now the little mare would be fully an hour making it, and then dead tired for a long drive back, with a pointer and two setters crowding us out of the buggy. I'll be at your place in twenty minutes with two dogs—have that champion pointer of yours ready." And he rang off.
I hung up the receiver. "I guess I'm up against it," I said, as I went off to put on my hunting clothes, "but if it gets out on me I can prove I didn't want to do it. Besides, this new hunting cap I've just bought would make Moses look like a Turk in Hades; nobody would recognize me."
"Jack, I'm ashamed of you," said Eloise with becoming scorn. "What would Satan say? But of course, if you are going in that thing, and happen to bag any birds—which I know you'll never do—please remember the luncheon I am going to give to-morrow, dear. But you'll never get them, going back on your raising like that—see if you do!"
"No, see if you do," said one of the twins, now aged four.
And the other added, "No, see if you do!"
For which I kissed them both, because they were so femininely consistent.
The truth is, I wanted to go hunting. It was in my blood that morning, and these beautiful December days with a hazy glow on the blue hills and that stillness that comes like a dropping nut in a forest would put it into anybody's blood, anybody who had it. And when the infection hits you there is only one antidote, a dog, a gun, a tramp over the hills, and—whir! bang! bang!
And to-day was ideal. I had felt it all morning; the cool, bracing air with that little frosty aroma of leaves curling to crispness under the first blight of things, and that other delightful odor of pungent woodland damp with frost-biting dew. And the hills blue and beautiful are alone worth going to meet, and the trees crimson in the hectic flush of the dying year.