"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain. Half an hour of uninterrupted running."
"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully. "Then I relieve guard, and you turn out. I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us lands him." "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised herself.
"Let's find out where he is." Ethel, with business-like promptitude, sprang to the bell and rang it. "Of course," she observed complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the privilege in question should not be hers. "Fancy Sharnbrook! Ferrets in one's bedroom."
"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly. "Is Mr. Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.