At this dire threat Anne had to blink to keep back her tears, and the worst of it was that Miss Jule and Miss Letty were coming to tea with Hamlet and Tip, also Mr. Hugh, and it was a moonlight night, and Anne and Tommy had expected to walk part way home with them.
Anne crept out to the dog nursery to see that all was safe and give the pups their supper, resolving that if there were more accidents it should be neither her fault nor Tommy’s; she would bear the responsibility for both.
Happy had come home quite tired out and very muddy after her run, and with a wild look in her eyes that was unusual for this staid parent. She was lying on the floor flat as a pancake, while Jack, as if in return for her care of him, licked her face gently. There was something very beautiful in Jack’s love for his mother; he slept close by her at night and had the most tender way with her; and once, when he was only two months old and a strange dog came into the garden and accidentally trod on Happy’s foot so that she cried, Jack rushed out, ridged up his back hair for the very first time and flew at the stranger in real if baby wrath.
Happy did not lie still long, but paced up and down and sniffed eagerly, Jack watching her out of the corner of one eye.
“It’s the hunting’s comin’ on her,” said Baldy, looking over Anne’s shoulder as he came up with the milk pails. “She’s larnt them pups most everythin’ but that, an’ some fine night she’ll get ’em out, no matter how fast you’ve shet ’em, for it’s natur. When she’s had ’em out a few times, then like as not she’ll be done with ’em and leave ’em to shift and take to her own ways agin.
“Watch out when the moon’s bright and the dew’s heavy; rabbit hounds most allus begins that time, for trailin’s dead easy, an’ you’ll hear even if you don’t see nothin’.”
After supper Anne took the twins out to show them to Mr. Hugh, who was a good judge of hunting dogs, and for the first time she noticed that not only was Jack growing larger than Jill, whom Mr. Hugh pronounced nearly perfect in the matter of points, but that he was of a different shape. His legs were longer and he leaped along and did not drop his body when he ran, as his mother and father did, so that the family name of Waddles seemed inappropriate.