“I rather like it, Larry!” she said, beaming at him; “quite nice!”

“What?  What’s quite nice?” says Larry, beaming back; “oh, this?” He gave the moustache an extra upward twist.  “Yes, rather so!  Beats the Kaiser’s to fits, I flatter myself!  I’m glad you like it, but I don’t see how you could help it!”

Yes!  This was the old Larry, the right one; Christian felt very glad.  It might so easily have been some one else, some one not half so nice as her own old Larry.

“Why on earth didn’t you say you were coming?  Cousin Freddy told us that you were painting at Etaples.”

“So I was till one fine day I ’took the notion for to cross the raging ocean,’ and I’m jolly glad I did too!  Oh, by Jove!  Look at old Bill and the hounds!  What a swell!  Christian, do you know I haven’t seen a hound for four years!  Do you mind if I call them ‘dogs,’ just till I get used to them a bit?”

There are few bonds more enduring than those that are woven round the playmates of childhood.  In how many raids had Larry not been Christian’s trusted leader!  What stolen dainties had they not shared, what punishments not endured together!  Larry’s three years of seniority had only deepened the reverence and loyalty that he had inspired in his youngest follower; he had never presumed upon them; he had been a chieftain worthy of homage, and he had Had all Christian’s.  There are some people who appear to change their natures when they grow up.  They may have been pleasing as little boys or girls; they may be equally agreeable as men and women, but there is no continuity and no development.  They have become new creatures.  Christian, alone of her family, was essentially as she had ever been, and, being of those whose inward regard is as searching as their outward observation, she knew it.  Now, Larry had come back again, and in half-a-dozen sentences she knew that neither had he changed, and that with him her ancient leader had returned.

The Wood of Nad (which, being interpreted, means a nest) filled a pocket on the side of Lissoughter Hill, and had thence spread over the crest of the hill, and ended near the cross-roads at which the hounds had met.

“Don’t holloa away an old fox.  I want to kill a cub if I can.  I’ll let you know if the hounds get away below.  You needn’t be afraid I won’t!  Open the gate!”

Thus, magisterially, the Master, standing at the gate into the wood, with the hounds crushing round his horse’s heels, “Leu in there!”

With a squeal or two of excitement from Dido and her brethren-puppies, the hounds squeezed through the narrow gateway, and were swallowed up by the wood.

Larry returned to Christian’s side.

“I hate not seeing Cousin Dick out,” he began; “what a pity he gave ’em up!  Why did he?  You know, Christian, you were pretty rotten about writing to me!  Aunt Freddy never tells me a thing about the Hunt!  I didn’t even know Cousin Dick had chucked till I saw it in The Field.”