‘Dear me,’ cried St. Cleeve, blankly. ‘That’s a thing I never thought of.’
‘Nor I, till now,’ she replied.
He reflected with misgiving.
‘Beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard I have nothing. However, just outside the door there are lots of those little rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners. And they are as tame as possible. But I fear I could not catch one now. Yet, dear Viviette, wait a minute; I’ll try. You must not be starved.’
He softly let himself out, and was gone some time. When he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush.
‘I could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,’ he said. ‘But I have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.’
He showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish it at the brook which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring Bottom.
‘They are all asleep at my grandmother’s,’ he informed her when he re-entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher. ‘They imagine me to be a hundred miles off.’
The birds were now ready, and the table was spread. With this fare, eked out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of water from the pitcher, to which Swithin added a little wine from the flask he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be content for their supper.