"But I never wanted to get it," said his daughter, in surprise. "It's perfectly awful to get a hare; they cry just like a baby, and it makes you feel horrid."
"Then why did you go after it?"
"Why?" asked Norah, opening her eyes. "Well, I knew the dogs couldn't catch it—and I believe you wanted a gallop nearly as much as I did, Daddy!" They laughed at each other, and let the impatient horses have their heads across the cleared paddock to the homestead.
There a letter awaited them.
Norah, coming in to dinner in a white frock, with her curls unusually tidy, found her father looking anything but pleased over a closely covered sheet of thin notepaper.
"I wish to goodness women would write legibly," he said, with some heat. "No one on earth has any right to write on both sides of paper as thin as this—and then across it! No one but your Aunt Eva would do it—she always had a passion for small economies, together with one for large extravagances. Amazing woman! Well, I can't read half of it, but what she wants is unhappily clear."
"She isn't coming here, Daddy?"
"Saints forbid!" ejaculated Mr. Linton, who had a lively dread of his sister—a lady of much social eminence, who disapproved strongly of his upbringing of Norah. "No, she doesn't mention such an extreme course, but there's something almost as alarming. She wants to send Cecil here for Christmas."
"Cecil! Oh, Daddy!" Norah's tone was eloquent.
"Says he's been ill," said her father, glancing at the letter in a vain effort to decipher a message written along one edge. "He's better, but needs change, and she seems to think Billabong will prove a sanatorium." He looked at Norah with an expression of dismay that was comical. "I shouldn't have thought we'd agree with that young man a bit, Norah!"