After all had been washed, and each had enjoyed a good tumble among the straw, Mark summoned them to the feeding-room, where a bountiful meal was ready for their sharpened appetites. When this was finished--and it did not occupy many minutes--they were conducted to another lodging-house, so that there might be no damp or chill remaining from the wet straw in the one used as the _drying_ apartment. Nothing could be more perfect than all the arrangements made for our health and comfort, and yet, in themselves, they consisted of little more than a simple method of doing that well, which would have occupied quite as much time and trouble in the end to do badly. “There,” remarked Trimbush, with his ribs sticking out as if they were well lined within, “now I feel comfortable, and at peace with all the world.” “Except the foxes in it,” replied I. “Oh!” rejoined he, “I have no enmity towards them. It’s the combined joy of finding, running, and beating them, and the pleasure of----” “Eating them,” added I. “Well?” continued he, as if weighing the sentence, “I suppose we may say that, too; but I am rather doubtful about it.” “About what?” inquired I. “About the eating part of the business,” replied he. “It’s true that we break up a fox, and swallow him as if we loved his carcase better than any other kind of flesh. But, in my opinion, it is more from the excitement we are worked into than from any desirable flavour he possesses. A fox is too near ourselves for him to be considered proper food for our stomachs. It’s approaching particularly close to dog eating dog.” “But that you did once,” said I. “Yes,” responded Trimbush, carelessly, “I know I did, and might again, under similar circumstances. It only shows,” he continued, “what we will do when in a rage or in an excited state. There is nothing with life, from an elephant to a cockroach, but we would have a shy at.” “Then you don’t believe that we really love the varmint as a dainty morsel?” rejoined I. “No,” returned he, “I think not. Fancy, for instance, your killing and eating the poor little vixen chained just outside the kennel door.” “Ugh!” said I, disgusted at the thought. “Does not that prove what I say?” asked my companion. “We pass her continually in going out and coming in, and yet not one of us ever thinks of making a meal of her. But if the fox was our _natural_ food, we couldn’t help doing so, and the first opportunity that presented itself she would be digested victuals.” “But, perhaps, the fear of getting a good drubbing may operate as a check to the inclinations of others,” observed I. “If that were the case,” replied he, “how is it that the hounds, which occasionally come home by themselves hungry, never make the slightest attempt to injure her? Nothing would be easier than to kill and eat the fox without the smallest risk of being discovered.” “There’s great force in your argument,” I remarked.