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.