“Yes, please,” said Sylvie, putting her hand into mine: and we walked off together.
“Bruno loves blackberries,” she said, as we paced slowly along by a tall hedge, “that looked a promising place for them, and it was so sweet of him to make me eat the only one!”
“Oh, it was you that ate it, then? Bruno didn't seem to like to tell me about it.”
“No; I saw that,” said Sylvie. “He's always afraid of being praised. But he made me eat it, really! I would much rather he—oh, what's that?” And she clung to my hand, half-frightened, as we came in sight of a hare, lying on its side with legs stretched out just in the entrance to the wood.
“It's a hare, my child. Perhaps it's asleep.”
“No, it isn't asleep,” Sylvie said, timidly going nearer to look at it: “it's eyes are open. Is it—is it—her voice dropped to an awestruck whisper, is it dead, do you think?”
“Yes, it's quite dead,” I said, after stooping to examine it. “Poor thing! I think it's been hunted to death. I know the harriers were out yesterday. But they haven't touched it. Perhaps they caught sight of another, and left it to die of fright and exhaustion.”
“Hunted to death?” Sylvie repeated to herself, very slowly and sadly. “I thought hunting was a thing they played at like a game. Bruno and I hunt snails: but we never hurt them when we catch them!”
“Sweet angel!” I thought. “How am I to get the idea of Sport into your innocent mind?” And as we stood, hand-in-hand, looking down at the dead hare, I tried to put the thing into such words as she could understand. “You know what fierce wild-beasts lions and tigers are?” Sylvie nodded. “Well, in some countries men have to kill them, to save their own lives, you know.”
“Yes,” said Sylvie: “if one tried to kill me, Bruno would kill it if he could.”