He was struggling desperately with a great snail, clinging to one of its horns, and nearly breaking his poor little back in his efforts to drag it over a blade of grass.
I saw we should have no more gardening if I let this sort of thing go on, so I quietly took the snail away, and put it on a bank where he couldn't reach it. “We'll hunt it afterwards, Bruno,” I said, “if you really want to catch it. But what's the use of it when you've got it?”
“What's the use of a fox when oo've got it?” said Bruno. “I know oo big things hunt foxes.”
I tried to think of some good reason why “big things” should hunt foxes, and he should not hunt snails, but none came into my head: so I said at last, “Well, I suppose one's as good as the other. I'll go snail-hunting myself some day.”
“I should think oo wouldn't be so silly,” said Bruno, “as to go snail-hunting by oor-self. Why, oo'd never get the snail along, if oo hadn't somebody to hold on to his other horn!”
“Of course I sha'n't go alone,” I said, quite gravely. “By the way, is that the best kind to hunt, or do you recommend the ones without shells?”
“Oh, no, we never hunt the ones without shells,” Bruno said, with a little shudder at the thought of it. “They're always so cross about it; and then, if oo tumbles over them, they're ever so sticky!”
By this time we had nearly finished the garden. I had fetched some violets, and Bruno was just helping me to put in the last, when he suddenly stopped and said “I'm tired.”
“Rest then,” I said: “I can go on without you, quite well.”
Bruno needed no second invitation: he at once began arranging the dead mouse as a kind of sofa. “And I'll sing oo a little song,” he said, as he rolled it about.