Talbot looks round apprehensively. Heaven send that no one, neither meddlesome Jacob, nor gaping boy, nor screaming maids, nor--worst of all--Peggy herself, may come up till he has got at his prey, may come up to rob him of the glory of safe recovery and restoration. In his haste he incautiously thrusts in his arm, feels something warm and woolly, but feels too, at the same instant, a smart stinging sensation as of little teeth fastening on his finger. He draws his hand away quickly, and shakes it, for the pain is acute.
'You are there, my young friend, that is very clear.'
But he cannot be stopped by such a trifle! He hastily binds up his wound with his pocket-handkerchief, and begins quickly to enlarge the opening. As it grows, he has to fill it with his body, to obviate the danger of the fox making a dash past him. In the course of his labours, several little pots fall about his ears; a dislodged spade-handle gives him a brisk blow on the shoulder; old cobwebs get into his mouth. But he is rewarded at last. Through the breach he has made daylight pours in, and shows him a little red form crouched up against the wall, and showing all its dazzling white teeth in a frenzy of fear. Poor little beast! Probably some indistinct memory of the cruel hounds that tore its mother limb from limb is giving its intensity of terror to that grin. But if he is suffering from fear, he is also perhaps at present a little calculated to inspire it. It just crosses Talbot's mind how exceedingly unpleasant it will be, if, in these very close quarters, the companion of his tete-a-tete makes for his nose. There is nothing for it but to take the initiative. It occurs to him that he may have a pair of dog-skin gloves in his pocket; and this on examination, proving to be the case, he puts them on. The right-hand glove will of course not go over the handkerchief that binds his finger. It--the handkerchief--has therefore to be removed, and the blood spurts out afresh. What matter? Thus protected, without further delay he makes a bold grab, past that grinning, gleaming row of fangs, at the scruff of the fox's neck, and having got a good grip of it, proceeds to back out of the hole, dragging his booty after him; the booty snapping, and holding on to the ground with all his four pads in agonised protestation.
To back out of a hole, with all the blood in your body running to your head, smothered in cobwebs, with dusty knees and barked knuckles--this is hardly the way in which a man would wish to present himself to a woman with whom he is anxious to stand well. And yet it is under these conditions that Peggy, at whose feet he finds himself on having completed his retrograde movement, first sees anything in him to admire.
'So you have found him?' cries she, dropping on her knees, and turning a radiant face towards the procession on all-fours which has now quite emerged into the daylight; 'behind the pots? and we thought that we had searched everywhere so carefully. How clever of you!--but' (her tone changing) 'you have hurt him!' her glance falling on a few drops of Talbot's blood which, stealing from under the glove, have dropped on the fox's fur.
'I do not think so,' replies the young man drily; but he does not more directly claim his own property, nor protest against the--as it happens--rather ingenious injustice of this accusation.
'Then he has hurt you!' says she, drawing this obvious inference; and her blue eye darts like lightning at his hand. 'He has bitten you! oh, how shocking of him! Not badly?'
'He mistook me for a hound, I suppose,' replies John, smiling.
'He was determined that you should not forget a second time that he was a fox,' says she, breaking into a charming mischievous laugh, lapsing, however, at once again into grave solicitude; 'but it is not a bad bite, is it? Let me look! Here, Prue! take this little villain home, and shut him up, and let us hear no more about him!'
Prue complies, and the two young people remain in the tool-house alone.
'Let me look,' says she, beginning very delicately to pull off the glove, so as not to hurt him. 'How did he manage to get at you through this thick glove?'
'I did not put it on till afterwards,' replies Talbot. 'Of whom does that trait remind you? If it is Simple Simon, do not mind saying so!'
They both laugh.
'But it is a dreadful bite!' says she, holding the wounded finger with two or three of her slight yet strong ones--fingers a little embrowned by much practical gardening, and down which he now feels little shivers of compunction and concern running. 'Almost to the bone! oh, poor finger! I feel so guilty. Come with me into the house, and let me tie it up for you.'
He is in no great hurry to have it tied up. He likes the dusty tool-house, and is not at all alarmed at the sight of his own gore; but, consoling himself with the reflection that Prue will probably pass some time in weeping over and fondling their amiable pet, and that he has a good chance of, at all events, some further tete-a-tete over the rag and oil-silk, he follows her docilely, and presently finds himself inside the little room into which he had had so much ado to hinder himself from peering during his long kicking his heels at the hall door.
It proves to be not a drawing-room after all--to have more of the character and informality of a little sitting-hall; a room where dogs may jump on the chairs with as valid a right as Christians; a room with an oak settle by the chimney-corner, and a great cage full of twittering finches in a sunny window, and into which half the flowers of the field seem to have walked, and colonised its homely vases; a room with nothing worth twopence-halfpenny in it, and that yet is sweet and lovable.
He has not many minutes in which to make his explorations, for she is promptly back with her appliances, and silently binding round his finger her bit of linen that smells of lavender.
As she stoops over his hand he can look down on the top of her head, and admire her parting--a thing which not many ladies possess nowadays. Hers is as straight as a die; and on each side of that narrow white road rises the thick fine hair, bright and elastic.
It is many years since Betty has owned a parting. On the other hand, she has two very nice toupets--a morning and an evening one. Talbot has once or twice seen one of these toupets off duty, and has regretted his knowledge that it came off and on. Well, there is nothing about Peggy that comes off and on.
How quickly and daintily she has dressed his wound, and--oh! if here is not Prue already back again!
'Have you shut him safely in?' looking up from her nearly finished task.
'Yes.'
'And given him his dinner?'
'Yes; but he will not eat it. I think he is seriously vexed; he tried to bite me, too!'
Talbot laughs.
'What could have made you choose such a pet?'
'We did not exactly choose him,' replies Margaret gravely; 'he was sent to us; all the rest of the litter were killed. He was the only one the huntsman could save. He brought him to show us. He was a mere ball of fluff then. One could not turn away a poor little orphan ball of fluff from one's door, could one?'
'He was a very tiresome orphan then, as he always has been since,' says Prue drily. 'No one but Peggy would have been bothered with him; he was far more trouble than a baby. She had him,'--turning towards Talbot--'to sleep in her room for a whole fortnight, and got up every two hours all through the night to feed him.'
Margaret reddens.
'He would have died else!'
'But no other person on earth would have had the patience, would they?' cries Prue, warming with her theme.
'Prue!' says Peggy severely, 'is my trumpeter dead, and are you applying for the situation?'
At this moment the door opens, and one of the three neat maids whom John has already seen careering about the pleasure-grounds in pursuit of the fox, enters with a tea-tray.
The sight of a covered dish of hot cakes recalls to Talbot the original object of his visit.
'Oh, by the bye, I was forgetting! I have a message for you from Lady Roupell.'
'Have you?'
She is standing, straight and lithe as a young poplar, by the tea-table, brandishing a brown teapot in her hand.
'Yes. She bid me tell you that they are all coming down to see you to-morrow afternoon.'
Is it his imagination that a sudden slight stiffening comes over her as he speaks--a stiffening that seems to extend even to the friendly teapot?
'And also,' continues he, not much liking his errand, and hastening to get it over, 'she desired me to say that, as she is particularly fond of muffins, and as yours are an exceptionally good----'
'Are you sure that she said all that?' interrupts Prue, with a sceptical gaiety. 'She is not generally so polite. She generally says only, "Girls, I'm coming; have lots of muffins!"'
Talbot laughs, convicted.
'Perhaps that was nearer the mark.'
'I am so glad that they are all coming,' pursues Prue, with excitement. 'Will Lady Betty come? Oh, I hope so! How beautiful she is! What eyes! What a colour!'
Talbot looks sheepish. The alarmingly increased volume and splendour of his Betty's carnations of late have been the cause of several sharp altercations between him and her. And yet he cannot doubt that the child says it in all good faith. It is not at the corners of her mouth that that tiny malicious smile is lurking. To him how much pleasanter a topic was the fox! He relishes the change in the conversation so little that he scalds his throat in his haste to drink his tea and be gone.
As he walks home across the park he entertains himself with the reflection how he shall account to Betty for his finger.
