Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/733

Rh Miss Graeme laughs at the idea, but her more sophisticated brother approves.

"Come along, Bee; you can come to the top wood, at all events, and Jack will bring you home."

Jack. — "Catch me!"

"Well, she can stay with me, then, and I'll look after her — can't she, mamma?" says the young sovereign, graciously. Unless in a very bad temper, Arthur always extends his benign protection to his sister.

But will she he with him all the time? Is it not too far to walk? Bee is sure she is able for it? Thick boots? Galoshes?

Satisfied on these points, Lady Graeme has no objection; Arthur will be taken up with the sport, and she sees in Betty's dancing eyes her great desire.

A roe-hunt is nothing new to her, it is true, but she is too much an out-of-doors creature not to delight in the walk, and the sport, and the fun and excitement generally.

If only Captain Blount had not been going. His being there is a check upon them all. However, she will keep out of his way; and he cannot think her accompanying them very odd, or Arthur would not have proposed it.

Besides (Betty, not Beatrix, speaking), she does not care what he thinks!

Gladly she leaves her notes unwritten, tumbles them into the drawer, and in her glee at escaping runs headlong against Harry, who is standing outside the door, staring, with one eye shut, down the muzzle of his gun.

Bee, in running against the gun, knocks it from the eye, and it scrapes his cheek.

"I beg your pardon; I am so sorry I" cries she, joyously, and flies upstairs.

Harry Blount looks after her, for just half a minute, then he rubs his cheek, and stares down the gun-muzzle again.

Outside the beaters are gathering fast.

Duncan's wizened visage peers out of the hall-door, and hails M'Killop, the long-bodied policeman, who proposes to keep the boys in order, and has tried it in vain, at every hunt in the Castle Graeme drives, for the last ten or fifteen years.

The boys will not be kept in order; hut M'Killop enjoys the sport as much as any one of them, and the dinner after it too.

"M'Killop, will ye tak' onything?"

"Thank ye, Duncan; no' the noo. Are they ready yet?"

"They'll be ready soon enough. Sir Charles is gone ben, and he's aye to his time."

"Is that fat George o' yours to gang wi' us, Duncan?"

"He'll no' gang far, ye needna fear."

"Has he been on the hill, ever?"

No' he."

"We'll gie him a taste o't, then. What stryngers hae ye in the hoose the day?"

"An Englisher wi' the captain, that's a'."

"Nane o' the Striven set?" in a disappointed tone.

"Nane but oorselves the day."

M'Killop administers chastisement to an explosive boy, and touches his cap to my lady at the window.

A voice from behind, and Arthur appears. "How are you, M'Killop? Are these all you have got for us to-day?" says he, grandly.

"'Deed, an' I thocht we had done pretty weel, captain. There's five-and-thairty here, and yonder's a wheen mair on the road."

"Yes. Not so had, after all. We have usually a great many more," observes Arthur to his friend; "but these will do the work, and that is all we want."

"A' we want, indeed!" mutters the policeman, indignantly; "an' me getting them thegither the haill o' yesterday! Sir Charles kens better."

Sir Charles comes out beaming all over.

"Hey, M'Killop! You have a fine set of lads here to-day. A splendid array, eh, Arthur? You see we can get up a hunt as well as ever, though you did give us such short notice. It was too bad of the captain, was it not, M'Killop?"

M'Killop grins, pacified and self-conscious; while Arthur talks to Blount as loudly as he can; and Beatrix, feeling a little ashamed of her brother, tries also to cover his confusion.

Then follows a rush from behind, Jack, Tom, and Charlie, exuberant, ecstatic, perfectly uncontrollable in their rejoicings.

"I say, papa, look at George. George is going! He! he! he!"

No one can help looking at George, of course. Duncan openly sniggers; M'Killop turns aside; and Blount, Arthur, and Beatrix on the door-steps glance at each other.

Six-foot-high George, the most solemn of footmen, is there, his fat white face surmounted by a fancy cap; his borrowed attire, if not unfit, at least unfitting, from top to toe; his hand grasping as grievous a crab-tree cudgel as ever did that of Giant Despair.

"George! you can't walk!" Sir Charles blurts out.