“Now, look,” he crowed. “Just you look, Miss Blooming-Cocksure!”
He was right. There was the mark of his own heavy nailed boot, and beside it the track of other feet; oddly-shaped enough, but with the weight distinctly thrown upon the heel and great-toe, as no beast save man has ever yet thrown it—that fine developed great-toe, the emblem of leadership. Hardly a trace of such pressure as the three greater apes show, all on the outer edge of the foot; not even flat and even as the baboon throws his.
It was after this that—without another word said—Rhoda, meek for once, followed her brother’s example, and began to speak of the creature as “He.”
They even gave him a name. They called him Hodge; only in fun, and yet with a feeling that here was one of the first of all countrymen: less learned, and yet in some way so much more observant, self-sufficing, than his machine-made successors.
He could run at an almost incredible rate, bent as he was; climb any tree; out-throw either of them, doubling the distance. It was there that they got at the meaning of that closed fist; for at least three days he had never let go of his stone—his one weapon.
“He didn’t trust us.” Rhoda was hurt, her vanity touched; and when they had seemed to be making such progress, too!
“Not that—a sort of ingrained habit; the poor devil didn’t feel dressed without it,” protested Hector. “Of course he trusts us as much as a perfectly natural creature ever trusts anything or anybody.”
The Rector had gone on a visit to their only relative, an old aunt, who was dying in as leisurely a fashion as she had lived, and was unable to leave her. A neighbouring curate took that next Sunday’s service.
It had been a Monday when Hector found Hodge, and a very great deal can happen in that time.