Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/195

186 "No, my dear, we shot it."

"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.

"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse for us, Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that hunts and kills for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from that. I'll tell you what I've no patience with, and that's with these English folks that dress themselves up, and take fine horses and packs of dogs, and tear over the country after one little fox or rabbit. Bah, it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel, man-eating tigers, or animals that destroy property, it would be a different thing."