Then he went on, in a rather embarrassed manner, nerved by the confidence which his unknown companion roused in him:
“I was one day in my own woods at Faldon sketching; hounds were out, but I was not with them. I was sitting in the bracken quite hidden by it, and an old dog-fox slouched by me; his tail drooped, he was dead beat, he could scarcely drag himself along; he had a bad gash in his side from a stake or something; he went up to an old hollow oak, and out of it came his bitch and three little cubs; and they welcomed him, I assure you, just as his family might welcome a man going home after a hard campaign, and the bitch fell to licking the gash in his side, and the cubs frolicked around her. I never had the heart to hurt a fox again. Hares I never did hunt; it is barbarous work. But that fox, too, set me thinking. He cared for his home and his wife just like any good citizen going home in the tram to Peckham Rise or Brixton. It was a pretty sight that poor thing going home. I stopped there till dark to make sure the pack didn’t come after him.”
“You did very right,” she said in her soft grave voice. “I wish more men would pause and think like that.”
The wind rose and blew some more fine snow powder over them and in their faces.
“It is half-past two o’clock,” he said, looking at his watch, “I am sure you must miss your luncheon.”
“I should like a cup of tea,” she answered. “How much farther is it to Thorpe?”
“About three-quarters of a mile. We shall get there before dark. But I fear the Thorpe tea will not be up to your standard. However, they will give you a good fire at the Bell Inn.”
“The Bell Inn! It sounds like Charles Dickens and Washington Irving.”
“Yes; but there is no longer the abundance and the comfort of the old coaching-days; country inns, now, like most other things, hardly pay their own expenses.”
“I am afraid I prefer the wayside station on the edge of the Indian jungle, with ripe bananas brought to me on a cocoa-nut leaf, and the monkeys looking down for a share from the reed roofs.”