It was mid-afternoon when Lloyd Fenneben left his study for a stroll. As he approached the Saxon House, he saw old Bond Saxon slipping out of the side gate and with uncertain steps skulk down the alley.
“Poor old sinner! What a slave and a fool whisky can make of a man!” he thought. Then he remembered Dennie's anxiety of the morning. “There must be some cause for his prejudice against this strange hermit woman when he is drunk. Bond Saxon is not a man to hate anybody when he is sober.”
“Is you Don Fonnybone?” Bug Buler's little piping voice from the doorstep haled the Dean. “I finked Vic would turn, and he don't turn, and I 's hungry for somebody. May I go wis you, Don Fonnybone?” The baby lips quivered.
Lloyd Fenneben held out his hand and Bug put his little fist into it.
“Where shall we go, Bug? I 'm hungry for somebody, too.”
“Let's do find the bunny the bid dod ist scared away this morning. Turn on!”
Lloyd Fenneben was hardly conscious that Bug was choosing their path as the two strolled away together. Everywhere there was the pathos of a waning autumn day, and a soft haze creeping out of the west was making a blood-red carbuncle of the sun, set as a jewel on the amber-veiled bosom of the sky. The air was soft, wooing the spirit to a still, sweet peace. The two were at the outskirts of Lagonda Ledge now. The last board walk was three blocks back, and the cinder-made way had dwindled to a bare hard path by the roadside. A bend in the river cutting close to the road shows a long vista of the Walnut bordered by vine-draped shrubbery and overhung with trees. A slab of limestone beside a huge elm tree had been placed at this bend to prevent the bank from breaking, or a chance misdriving into the water.
“I 's pitty tired,” Bug said as the two reached the stone. “Will we tum to the bunny's house pitty soon?”
“We'll rest here a while and maybe the bunny will come out to meet us,” Dr. Fenneben said, and they sat down on the broad stone.
“It was somewhere here the bunny runned.” Little Bug studied the roadside with a quaint puzzled face. “Is you 'faid of snakes?”