“Look at that dear old thing!” he whispered to Norah, indicating a prim maiden lady who had arrived on foot. “I know she’s aching for a chance to ask me why I’m not in khaki!” He grinned delightedly. “She’s rather like the old lady who met me in the train the other day, and after looking at me sadly for a few minutes said, ‘My dear young man, do you not know that your King and Country want you?’”
“Phil! What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Well, they’ve got one of my legs, and they don’t seem to have any use for the remnant!’ I don’t think she believed me, so I invited her to prod it!” He chuckled at his grim joke. Three months ago he had shrunk from any mention of his injury as from the lash of a whip.
Mrs. Ainslie never wasted time. Two minutes’ grace for any laggards—which gave time for the arrival of a stout lady on a weight-carrying cob—and then she moved on, and in a moment the hounds were among the osiers, hidden except that now and then a waving stern caught the eye. Occasionally there was a brief whimper, and once a young hound gave tongue too soon, and was, presumably, rebuked by his mother, and relapsed into hunting in shamed silence.
The osiers proved blank: they drew out, and went up the hill into the covert, while the field moved along to be as close as possible, and the followers on foot dodged about feverishly, hoping for luck that would make a fox break their way. Too often the weary lot of the foot contingent is to see nothing whatever after the hounds once enter covert, since the fox is apt to leave it as unobtrusively as possible at the far side, and to take as short a line as he can across country to another refuse. To follow the hounds on foot needs a stout heart and patience surpassing that of Job.
But those on horses know little of the blighting experiences of the foot-plodders: and when Norah went a-hunting everything ceased to exist for her except the white-and-black-and-tan hounds and the green fields, and Brunette under her, as eager as she for the first long-drawn-out note from the pack. They moved restlessly back and forth along the hillside, the black pony dancing with impatience at the faintest whimper from an unseen hound. Near them Killaloe set an example of steadiness—but with watchful eyes and pricked ears.
Squire Brand came up to them.
“I’d advise you to get up near the far end of the covert,” he said. “It’s almost a certainty that he’ll break away there and make a bee-line across to Harley Wood. I hope he will, for there’s less plough there than in the other direction.” He hurried off, and Norah permitted Brunette to caper after him. A young officer on a big bay followed their example.
“Come along,” he said to a companion. “It’s a safe thing to follow old Brand’s lead if you want to get away well.”
Where the covert ended the hill sloped gently to undulating fields, divided by fairly stiff hedges with deep ditches, and occasionally by post-and-rail fences, more like the jumps that Norah knew in Australia. The going was good and sound, and there was no wire—that terror of the hunter. Norah had always hated wire, either plain or barbed. She held that it found its true level in being used against Germans.