“To go out shutting with the master, miss.”
“You shall do it; I will speak to papa myself. If you please, Miss Madge, pay up your shilling. Now come back, Bonny; your master wants you.”
“You are a little too late for your errand, I fear,” answered Margaret, pulling her purse out; “while you were pursuing this boy, I heard the sound of a grand arrival.”
“So much the better!” cried Cecil, who (like her mother) always made the best of things. “Papa has been teasing his gun for an hour. Bonny, run back, and keep old Shot quiet. He will break his chain, by the noise he makes. You are as bad as he is; and you both shall go.”
The Rector—of all men the most hospitable, though himself so sober in the morning—revived Captain Chapman, or at least refreshed him, with brandy and bitters, after that long ride. And keenly heeding all hindrance, in his own hurry to be starting, he thought it a very bad sign for poor Alice, that Stephen received no comfort from one, nor two, nor even three, large glasses.
At length they set forth, with a sickly sun shrinking back from the promise of the morning, and a vaporous glisten in the white south-east, looking as watery as the sea. “I told you so, Steenie,” said the parson, who knew every sign of the weather among these hills; “we ought to have started two hours sooner. If ever we had wet jackets in our life, we shall have them to-day, bold captain.”
“It will bring in the snipes,” said the captain, bravely. “We are not the sort of men, I take it, to heed a little sprinkle. Tom, have you got my bladder-coat?”
“All right, your honour,” his keeper replied: and “See-ho!” cried Bonny, while the dogs were ranging.
“Where, where, where?” asked the captain, dancing in a breathless flurry round a tuft of heath. “I can’t see him; where is he, boy?”
“Poke her up, boy,” said the Rector; “surely you would not shoot the poor thing on her form!”