"Yes."
"Did they get him?"
"No. He is a wise old fox. He lives up beyond the Crossroads garden. Dr. Brooks thought when they came there to live that he would go away but he hasn't. You see, it is his home. The hunters here all know him, and they are always glad when he gets away."
Brinsley agreed. "There are so few native foxes left in the county that most of us call off the dogs before a killing—we'd soon be without sport if we didn't. An imported fox is a creature in a trap; you want the sly old natives to give you a run for your money."
Little François, dark-eyed and dreamy, delivered an energetic opinion. "I think it is horrid."
Peggy, less sensitive, and of the country, reproved him. "It's gentleman's sport, isn't it, Mr. Brinsley?"
"Yes. To me the dogs and horses are the best part of it. The older I grow the more I hate to kill—that's why I fish. They are cold-blooded creatures."
Peggy, leaning on his knee, demanded a fish story. "The one you told us the last time."
Brinsley's fish story was a poem written by one of the Old Gentlemen, hunting now, it was to be hoped, in happier fields. It was an idyl of the Chesapeake:
"In the Chesapeake and its tribute streams,
Where broadening out to the bay they come,
And the great fresh waters meet the brine,
There lives a fish that is called the drum."