“I never did see a rabbit put up a worse fight than that one did.  I rode up to its fragments, and the old lady was saying how ripping it was and calling sister a mollycoddle, because here was sister crying like a baby over the rabbit’s fate—­a rabbit she’d never set eyes on before in her life.  Brother didn’t look like he had gone in keenly for the sport, either.  He was kind of green and yellow, like one of these parties on shipboard about the time he’s saying he don’t feel the boat’s motion the least bit; and, anyway, he’s got a sure-fire remedy for it if anything does happen.  I just kind of stood around, neutral and revolted.

“Pretty soon the pack beagles off again with glad cries; and this time, up on the hillside, what do they start but a little spike buck that has been down to a salt lick on the creek flat!  They wasn’t any more afraid of him than they had been of the rabbit and started to chase him out of the country.  Of course they didn’t do well after they got him interested.  The last I saw of the race he was making ’em look like they was in reverse gear and backing up full speed.  Anyway, that seemed to end the sport for the day, because the dogs and the buck must of been over near the county line in ten minutes.  The old lady was mad and blamed it on the valet, who come up and had to take as sweet a roasting as you ever heard a man get from a lady word painter.  It seems he’d ought to have taught ’em to ignore deer.

“Then I lied like a lady and said it was a ripping sport that I would sure go in keenly for if I had time; and we all went back to the house and sat down to what they called a hunt breakfast.  Ma said at last her chits could hold up their heads in the world of sport and not be a reproach to her training.  The chits looked very thoughtful, indeed.  Sister still had red eyes and couldn’t eat a mouthful of hunt breakfast, and brother just toyed with little dabs of it.

“Next day I learned the pack didn’t get back till late that evening, straggling in one by one, and the valet having to go out and look for the last two with a lantern.  Also, these last two had been treated brutally by some denizen of the wildwood.  Rex II had darn near lost his eyesight and Lady Blessington was clawed something scandalous.  Brother said mebbe a rabbit mad with hydrophobia had turned on ’em.  He said it in hopeful tones, and sister cheered right up and said if these two had it they would give it to the rest of the pack, and shouldn’t they all be shot at once?

“Mother said what jolly nonsense; that they’d merely been scratched by thorns.  I thought, myself, that mebbe they’d gone out of their class and tackled a jack rabbit; but I didn’t say it, seeing that the owner was sensitive.  Afterward she showed me a lot of silver things her pets had won—­eye-cups and custard dishes, and coffee urns and things, about a dozen, with their names engraved on ’em.  She said it was very annoying to have ’em take after deer that way.  What she wanted ’em to do was to butcher rabbits where parties in the right garments could stand and look on.