The hat and jacket tumbled down. He caught a glimpse of the laughing
face in the thatch. It was going to be a tremendous lark--almost as good
as a King Arthur legend. The next moment she rejoined him.
“Sir Teddy, what are we going to do now?” She clung to his arm, jumping
with excitement.
“Hulloa!” he exclaimed, “the babies have come into your eyes.” He told
her that the babies came into her eyes when they became especially gray
and round.
They tiptoed out of the garden into the passage of the house. All the
downstair rooms were quiet; Mrs. Sarie’s footsteps overhead and the
smacks she gave the pillow were the only sounds. They crossed the
farmyard, walking unhurriedly as though nothing were the matter. From
the gateway they glanced back. The white fan-tails fluttered and cooed
on the thatch. The curtains blew in and out the open windows. Gaining
the path which led across the meadows, they ran--ran till they were
breathless.
Across the fields, with his nose to the ground, came another fugitive.
As he caught sight of them, he expressed his joy in a series of sharp
yaps.
“I say, this’ll never do. He’ll give us away before we know it Go back,
bad dog. Go back.”
Bones came a little nearer, crawling on his stomach, making abject
apologies, but positively refusing to go back.
They walked on together, the white cur following at their heels till
lapse of time should have made him certain that his permission to follow
was irrevocable.
They had been walking along the main-road, on the alert to scramble into
the hedge at the first sign of any one approaching. It was just such a
day as the one on which he had arrived, only dog-roses were fuller blown
and blackberries were growing ripe. The wheat was yellowing to a deeper
gold and the misty fragrance of meadow-sweet was in the air.
“Ha! Here’s one at last.”
It was a post with three fingers pointing.
“Yes, we’re all right. This one, sticking out the way we’re going,
says To Ware; but it says that it’s nine miles. D’you think, with those
little legs, you can manage it, Princess?”
She lowered her head, looking up through her lashes.
“They’re very strong little legs, and if you talk to me and talk to me,
so that I forget---- If I get very tired, I’ll let you carry me.”
They struck into fields again, clambering through hedges and over gates,
judging their direction by the road. Teddy was afraid to keep to the
road lest they should meet Farmer Joseph coming back from market, or
lest Mrs. Sarie, when she missed them, should send some one driving
after them to bring them back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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