discarded by the huntsman, a pair of couples slung round her neck, and
a crop in her hand.

It was a chilly, wet August afternoon. It had rained for the past
three days, and was, by all appearances, prepared to continue to do so
for three more. Christian ran across the fields to the kennels,
regardless of wet overhead or underfoot, and oblivious of the corked
moustache, which ran too, almost as fast as she did. She had made a
_détour_ to avoid the schoolroom windows. Her birthday party was
toward, and charades (accounting for her moustache) were in full
swing. But the message from Cottingham, secretly conveyed together
with the couples, by the pantry boy, transcended in importance all
other human affairs. She had slipped away from her fellows, and having
endured the hunting cap and the kennel coat, as the wear suitable to
such an occasion, she had not lost a minute in coming to the horn.

Cottingham, Major Talbot-Lowry's First Whip and kennel huntsman, a
single-souled little Devonshire man, whose dyed hair was the solitary
indication of the age it was intended to conceal, awaited her outside
the kennels.

"Well, Missie, I knew you'd come," he said, approvingly. "It's Amazon
that's away--that little badger-pye bitch we got last week--I 'ad to
give 'er a bit of a 'iding--she tried to run a sheep when we was
walkin' out last evening--she's a revengeful sort, she is, and very
artful, and when we gets near kennels, her took an' bolted past Jimmy
over the 'ill, an' I says to Jimmy, 'Why you fool' I says--"

The tale continued at length, and with those repetitions and
recapitulations peculiar to the simple, but by no means short annals