“Up from the wood they went, across pastures and a truck farm, until they gave tongue that the scent was hot, and the quarry close in front, then I saw two big rabbits that were the poorest leapers of any I ever knew. Will you believe it, Waddles, they even sat up once or twice and looked back at us. We overtook them in a fence corner that had a garden on the other side. We three charged together, and there was a great tussle, for if those rabbits were stupid about running, they were fine kickers. Just as I had the biggest well by the leg, a man and a little girl came to the fence, and when she saw what we were doing, she began to hop up and down and scream, and cry, ‘Oh, papa, save my poor bunnies!’ Then I saw that she was Tommy’s friend, Pinkie Scott, and those fool rabbits were the foreign Hare things her father gave her for her birthday, and that she keeps in a great big bird-cage,—that is, when she remembers to shut the door, which isn’t often. Of course, we were polite and let go, and went a little way back in the field and sat down to rest. The rabbits? Oh, one wasn’t hurt, but the other was—well—damaged; they mended him, for I saw him last week when I was down there to call on Luck and Pluck with Tommy. Pinkie had forgotten again, and those rabbits had broken loose and eaten all the late lettuce, and her father was chasing them, and he said, ‘I wish those little hounds had finished you last summer.’ Then I didn’t feel quite so ashamed of biting that hind leg as I had before, and, Waddles, do you know, that everywhere I go to visit, private rabbits seem to be a nuisance, and a ‘better be dead’; so I’m sure they ought to be fair hunting, like the wild ones.”
“Humph!” said Waddles, “good running as usual, but poor catching. What did the foxhounds get, a mouthful of thistle-down?”
“Ah! but they had the best of it,” said Happy, her eyes sparkling; “they stayed out two whole days, and when they had tired out the stray dogs that followed and the young dogs that only wanted to play, they settled down to work. They knew their ground well for they’d just been on a spring run with the squire and Mr. Hugh to locate the dens for fall work. Late the next night, Flo says, the squire’s Harkaway and Meadow-Lark gave tongue so loudly that the squire and Mr. Hugh went out, and following the cry two miles found them just as they had killed an old gray fox, the biggest hen-roost robber of all the Pine Ridge pack, one they had tried to shoot and trap for years, as his scars quickly told them.
“Wasn’t the squire proud! He gave Miss Jule the brush, though it wasn’t good for much,—pelts are poor in summer,—and he made a meat feast for all the hounds, for after they had heard Meadow-Lark’s death bay they came limping back one by one. Next day when I went up to talk to Silver-Tongue he was standing as usual by the sluiceway of the swimming-pool catching frogs, but when I asked him to come over by the fence and lie down, and tell me about the great hunt, he said he’d rather stand up for he didn’t bend well. That is one of the hardest things about not running free, you don’t get your exercise every day when you want it, but when somebody else does, and then it comes all together in bunches, and between times you get rusty.”
“What happened about Mr. Hugh’s pups, did he get them back, and the turkeys and ducks?” asked Waddles, who was beginning to grow sleepy.
“Bills happened and lots of talking, Hamlet told me about that and Mr. Wolf. The farmer and the miller wouldn’t give back the dogs until they got their money either, and Hamlet says if Mr. Hugh teases Miss Letty she only has to sing ‘Over the hills and far away!’ and he stops, but I don’t see what that has got to do with it, do you?”
“Hush!” signalled Waddles, knocking on the floor with his tail to attract Happy’s attention, “Missy is coming!”
Yes, Anne was coming downstairs, not barefoot this time, but dressed in a warm, red bath gown, her feet in moccasins, and looking in the dim light very like the Indian maidens she loved to call her kin. She had been planning what picture she would take first on the morrow, and she thought her camera might be safer in her room; at any rate if she put it on the chair beside her bed she would see it the moment she opened her eyes, for this camera was not merely a picture machine to her, but a magical live thing to help her keep the images of those she loved.