"Well I'm jiggered!" Buz exclaimed in breathless astonishment; "so he knows him too. Whatever are they playing at?"
He fixed the field-glasses, watching intently, then dropped them and rubbed his eyes, took them up again and gazed fixedly, and so absorbed was he that he positively leapt into the air when he heard his father's voice close beside him asking mildly, "What are you watching so intently, Hilary?"
The lovely winter afternoon had tempted Mr Ffolliot out. Usually Mrs Ffolliot accompanied him on his rare walks, but this afternoon he only decided to go out after she had left for Marlehouse. Like Buz, he sought the highest point of his estate, in his case that he might complacently survey its many acres.
Buz dropped the glasses so that they hung by their strap and swung round, facing his father with his back to the distant figures with the football, seized the glasses again and gazed into the copse, exclaiming eagerly, "A fox, sir; perhaps you could see him if you're quick," pulled the strap over his head, gave the glasses a dextrous twist, entirely destroying their focus, and handed them to his father, who fiddled about for some time before he could see anything at all.
"A fox," Mr Ffolliot repeated, "in the copse. We had better go and warn Willets to look out for his ducks and chickens."
"I don't suppose he'll stay, sir, but perhaps it would be as well.
Shall I take the glasses, father, they're rather heavy?"
But Mr Ffolliot had got them focussed and was leisurely surveying the distant scene; gradually turning so that in another moment he would bear directly on the field where Grantly and Eloquent were now to be seen standing in earnest conversation.
"There he is," shouted the mendacious Buz, seizing his father by the arm so violently that he almost knocked him down, "over there towards the house; don't you see him? a big dog fox with a splendid brush——"
Imperceptibly Buz had propelled his father down the slope on the side farthest from his brother.
"My dear Hilary," Mr Ffolliot exclaimed, straightening his hat, which had become disarranged in the violence of his son's impact, "one would think no one had ever seen a fox before; why be so excited about it?"