To her sister’s very reasonable request Vaga did not give the readiest assent. The petted young lady looked, and likely felt, some little vexed at her tête-à-tête with Eustace Trevor having been so abruptly brought to an end. It had promised to make that spot—amid reeds and rushes though it was—hallowed to her, as another on the summit of a certain hill, among hazels and hollies, had been made to her sister. Whatever her thoughts, she showed reluctance to leave the low ground, saying in rejoinder,—
“Oh! certainly, Sab. But won’t you wait till the dogs have finished beating the sedge?”
“If you wish it, of course. But you don’t expect them to find another heron?”
“No; but there may be a widgeon or wild duck. After such an easy victory, I’m sure my pers would like to have another flight. See how they chafe at their hoods and pull upon the jesses! Ah, my beauties! you want to hear the hooha-ha-ha-ha again—that do you.”
“Oh! let them, then,” said the more compliant Sabrina, “if the dogs put up anything worth flying them at; which I doubt their doing. We’ve made too much noise for that.”
The conjecture of the sage sister proved correct. For the marsh, quartered to its remotest corners, yielded neither widgeons nor wild ducks; only moor-hens and water-rails—quarry too contemptible to fly the great falcons at.
“Now,” said Sabrina, “I suppose you’ll consent to the climbing?”
Her motto might have been Excelsior; she seemed always urging an uphill movement.
But there was no longer any objection made to it; and the canines being called out of the sedge, all entered the forest, riders and followers afoot, and commenced winding by a wood-path up the steep acclivity of Ruardean’s ridge.
When upon its crest, which they soon after reached, the grand panorama already spoken of lay spread before their eyes. For they were on the same spot from which the young ladies had viewed it that day when Hector harassed the donkey. Neither of them bestowed a look upon it now; nor did Sabrina even glance at that road winding down from the Wilderness, off which on the former occasion she had been unable to take her eyes. Its interest for her no longer had existence; he who had invested it with such being by her side. Now she but thought of showing off the capabilities of “dear little Mer,” as in fondness she was accustomed to call the diminutive specimen of the falconidae.