"But that's no reason why you should poke my eye out with it!" exclaimed Betty, seizing the rough end of a long stick that was being brandished close to her head.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Your cheek is bleeding. Let's look!" and John proceeded to examine his handiwork with more apparent interest than regret.
"It's nothing! A miss is as good as a mile!" answered Betty impatiently, as she scrubbed her cheek with a dirty handkerchief. It was considered a great breach of etiquette to acknowledge that one was hurt when playing a game. At lessons, on the contrary, a little fuss about a scratch or bruise was allowable, because it took up time which otherwise would have been devoted to study.
"Hist! Go gently! We are tracking the wild boar to his lair!" muttered Madge. "Conceal yourselves from view behind the brushwood and creep after me."
Now, a mere ordinary grown-up person would have been puzzled how to carry out this order in a field where the grass was only about an inch long. He would have looked in vain for any shelter behind which even to hide his boots; he would in fact have been deplorably dense and literal. The three children did not hesitate for a minute. They slouched their hats forward over their faces, that being a concealment behind which it was recognized that no wild boar would be likely to penetrate; and they bent their knees into a fancied imitation of the attitude of an Indian on the war-path. This was the established mode of attacking a herd of wild animals.
"Halt! They have caught sight of us! Make ready your weapons!" cried Madge in a sort of suppressed shout. "They are preparing to charge! Look out!"
If the six black Berkshire pigs lying asleep in the sun under the wall were really preparing to charge they dissembled their purpose remarkably well. Half opening their tiny eyes they blinked lazily at their assailants, and it was not until they had received several sharp pokes from the long sticks that they would move from the spot where they were lying. Even then they only tottered a few steps farther off, and sank down again in a great heaving sleepy mass.
"If we threw a few stones at them perhaps they would run?" suggested John.
"Better not," said Madge; "supposing Barton saw us he would be sure to say we were hurting them."
"I only meant small ones, of course," answered John; "but I dare say he would make a fuss and tell Papa some long story, just as he did about our hunting the cows when we were only trying to catch the calf. He always thinks things are so much worse than they are really. But how shall we move the pigs without stones?"