'All women think like that,' said Justin; 'my goodness, if you listen to them you'd have a pretty dull time of it. I don't see anything cruel about it when they're just muzzled, and as for killing the rats!—they have to be killed.'
'All the same,' said Pat, 'it must be rather horrid to see.'
'It's no horrider than heaps of other things that are awfully jolly too,' said Justin. 'I suppose when you're a man you won't hunt, Pat, for fear you should be in at the death.'
'Hunting's different,' said Pat. 'There's all the jolliness of the riding. And shooting's different. There's the cleverness of aiming well, and papa says that when a bird's killed straight off, it's the easiest death it could have.'
'It's bad shots that make them suffer most,' said Archie. 'But I say, Jus, where are you going to. It must be nearly six. Have you finished your lessons?'
'Mind your own business,' said Justin, 'I'm not going in just yet, to be mewed up with Miss Ward in the schoolroom. I want a run across the moor first.'
To this neither of his brothers made any objection. There was one point in common among all the Hervey boys, and that was love, enthusiastic love, of their moor—its great stretch, its delicious, breezy air, the thousand and one interests they found in it, from its ever-changing colouring, its curious varieties of moss, and heather, and strange little creeping plants, to be found nowhere else, to the dark, silent pools on its borders, with their quaint frequenters; everything in and about and above the moor—for where were such sunsets, or marvellous cloud visions to be seen as here?—had a charm and fascination never equalled to them in later life by other scenes, however striking and beautiful.
Pat felt all this the most deeply perhaps, but all the others too, even careless Archie, and Justin, rough schoolboy though he was, loved the moor as a sailor loves the sea.
This evening the sunset had been very beautiful, and the colours were still lingering about the horizon as the boys ran along one of the little white paths towards the west.
'It's a pity Miss Mouse can't see it just now,' said Archie suddenly. 'She's a jolly little girl. I liked her for liking the moor. The next time she comes we can take her a good way across it, as far as Bob Crag's; she'd like to see the queer cottage.'