Cottingham had joined the party, and was leaning on the half-door of the kennel, watching his hounds with the never-failing interest of a good kennel-huntsman.

“I couldn’t be too ’ard on Miss Christeen, sir,” replied Cottingham; “her’s the best walk I have.  That there Nancy was a sickly little thing enough when I sent ’er to Miss Christeen, and look at ’er now!  A slapping fine bitch!”

Christian turned a slow and expressionless eye upon her accuser, indicating triumph.

“It’s like this with that Nancy,” continued Cottingham, with whom the preaching habit, fostered by years of laying down the law on subservient fields, was inveterate.  “Her got that fond of Miss Christeen, her follered ’er about, the way the ole lamb followed Mary, as they say.  And that artful she got!  Wouldn’t try a yard!  An’ she ’ad the ‘ole o’ the young entry like ’erself.  Any sort of a check, and back they all comes an’ looks at me, wi’ their ’eads a one side, and their sterns agoin’ like this,” he wagged a stubby fore-finger to and fro in so precisely the right rhythm, that, stubby as it was, no magic wand could evolve more instantly the scene to be presented; “an’ that’s ‘ow it’d be, th’ old ‘ounds workin’ ’ard, and the young uns lookin’ like they ‘as nothin’ to do only admire of me!”

“Quite right, too!” truckled Christian.

“Ah, Miss Christeen, I’m too used to soft soap, I am!”

“Well, you know, Cottingham, it was I cured Nancy when she took to following me about.”  She turned to Larry.  “Luckily, I broke my wrist, and by the time I was able to ride again she had given me up and taken to hunting.”

“That’s what you says, Miss,” said Cottingham; “but I reckon what her wanted was what her got from me—­a good ’idin’!”

Having made his point, Cottingham, a true artist, departed at the little toddling run that in kennels indicates devotion to duty, combined with a slippery floor.

“I had forgotten about your breaking your wrist—­I remember about my own, right enough!” said Larry.  “What rotten luck!”

“Oh, it’s dead sound now,” said Christian.  “Look!” She stood up, and held out both her slender hands to him across the intervening hounds’ backs.  “I bet you don’t know which is which!”

Larry took a hand in each of his, and flexed the wrists.  “The left, wasn’t it?” he said, without releasing them.  “Not that I see any difference, only I remember now that I heard you had smashed the same one that I did.”

“It did hurt—­horribly!  I expect you know.  It hurts still a little, sometimes.”  She looked at him for sympathy.  She was nearly eighteen now, and had caught him up in height, so that her brown eyes looked straight into his blue ones.

“Poor little paw!” said Larry patronizingly; he was going to be twenty-one in a week, and felt immeasurably older than Christian.  “Oh, by the way, I forgot!  I mustn’t say paw.  Must I call it ‘foot’?  I’ll make it well, anyhow!” he ended, and, in what he felt to be the manner of a kind uncle, he kissed the injured wrist.