MRS. BOB-WHITE AND THE HUNTING DOG
At the very peep of day Collie Dog and Setter Pup started out on a hunting trip of their own. Collie Dog called the place "my farm" and he had told his friend of all the wonderful sights there were to be seen on the place by a dog who could travel alone and do as he wanted. It was his habit, he said, to be abroad very early; sometimes, indeed, he would run over the fields and along the shore, or back into the woodland, for miles and miles before breakfast.
"And what do you do that for?" Setter Pup asked. For this youngster was just from the city, and he was not used to these country ways. "We never get up until long after the man with the milk cans has gone by the door, and the postman has come and gone," he yawned. "That's the proper thing in town."
Collie Dog laughed in a courteous way.
"And we get up before the milk cans start for town," he said. "That is, some of us do. But they'll take you out early enough when the hunting begins. And you'll be pointing birds all day in the fields and the swamps."
Setter Pup waved his tail proudly, for he meant to be a great hunter. That was why they had him in the country now—to teach him all sorts of things about guns and what to do when he smelt a covey of birds.
But Collie Dog was no hunter, being more of a scholar and a poet. His master, at any rate, had read him a great deal of poetry. And much of the poetry had been of a nature to discourage hunting; which was just what the doggie's master liked to do. He was thoroughly in sympathy with his pet, who couldn't endure a gun, either the sight or the sound of it. But, much as the gentleman knew about the fields and the woods, he would have known more could he have understood what Collie Dog would have loved to tell him. For that gentle dog was on the best of terms with every living creature for miles around. His early morning expeditions were always but so many rounds of visits.
Consequently, the newcomer, this eager and noisy young setter, was to make many new acquaintances on this daybreak excursion with Collie Dog.
Down the lane from the barn to the pasture they romped, the dew drenching their flanks as they brushed the tall weeds and bushes. Setter Pup, with his ears flapping in excitement, was plunging heedlessly ahead when Collie Dog called him back.
"Go easy here! We are sure to hear something," Collie Dog whispered.