“Now, where have you her? where have you her?” whispered he, squeezing Mrs. Wotherspoon’s plump arm to attract her attention, at the same time not to startle the hare.
“O, in the next field,” whispered she, “in the next field,” nodding towards a drab-coloured pasture in which a couple of lean and dirty cows were travelling about in search of a bite. They then proceeded towards it.
The gallant Major having opened the ricketty gate that intervened between the fallow and it, again adopted his fair charge, and proceeded stealthily along the high ground by the ragged hedge on the right, looking back and holding up his hand for silence among the followers.
At length Mrs. Wotherspoon stopped. “There, you see,” said she, nodding towards a piece of rough, briary ground, on a sunny slope, in the far corner of the field.
“I see!” gasped the delighted Major; “I see!” repeated he, “just the very place for a hare to be in—wonder there’s not one there always. Now,” continued he, drawing his fair charge a little back, “we’ll see if we can’t circumvent her, and get her to go to the west. Rintoul!” continued he, putting his hand before his mouth to prevent the sound of what he said being wafted to the hare. “Rintoul! you’ve got a whip—you go below and crack her away over the hill, that’s a good feller, and we’ll see if we can’t have something worthy of com-mem-mo-ration”—the Major thinking how he would stretch out the run for the newspapers—eight miles in forty minutes, an hour and twenty with only one check—or something of that sort.
The pause thrilled through the field, and caused our friend Billy to feel rather uncomfortable, he didn’t appreciate the beauties of the thing.
Rintoul having now got to his point, and prepared his heavy whip-thong, the gallant band advanced, in semicircular order, until they came within a few paces of where the briars began. At a signal from the Major they all hailed. The excitement was then intense.
“I see her!” now whispered the Major into Mrs. Wotherspoon’s ear. “I see her!” repeated he, squeezing her arm, and pointing inwardly with his thong-gathered whip.
Mrs. Wotherspoon’s wandering eyes showed that she did not participate in the view.
“Don’t you see the tuft of fern just below the thick red-berried rose bush a little to the left here?” asked the Major; “where the rushes die out?”