say I never heard of any one
being bitten or frightened by a dog at Shaws, and it is notorious
that, difficult though bloodhound whelps are to rear, the Colonel
rarely loses one in a litter. Still, "kindergarten" is certainly a
withering epithet in this connection; and one can perfectly understand
the professional's attitude. A sitting-room, nay, worse--"A kind of
drawing-room," in the midst of the kennels! Why, it almost suggests
that, forgetful of prize-winning, advertising, and selling, the
Colonel must positively have enjoyed the mere pleasure of spending a
leisure hour among his dogs; not at a show or in the public eye, but
in the privacy of his own home! Glaring evidence of amateurishness,
this. The knowing ones, as usual, were perfectly correct. That is
precisely what the Colonel was; a genuine amateur of hounds.

III

INTRODUCING THE LADY DESDEMONA

April was uniformly dull and wet that year, but May seemed to bring full
summer in her train; and it was on the morning of the third of May that
Finn went to Shaws with the Nuthill house party.

The turf of the Downs was so springy on this morning that one felt
uplifted by it in walking. Each separate blade of the clover-scented
carpet seemed surcharged with young life. The downland air was as a
tonic wine to every creature that breathed it. The joy of the day was
voiced in the liquid trilling of two larks that sang far overhead. The
place and time gave to the Nuthill party England at her best and
sweetest, than which, as the Master often said, the world has nothing
more lovely to offer; and he was one who had fared far and wide in other
lands.

There is the tiny walled inclosure above the stables at Shaws, once used
as a milking-yard, and just now a veritable posy of daisies, buttercups,
rich green grass, and apple-blossom. For in it there are six or seven
gnarled and lichen-grown old apple-trees, whose fruit is of small
account, but whose bloom is a gift sent straight from heaven to gladden
the hearts of men and beasts, birds and bees. The big double doors in
the ivy-grown flint wall of this inclosure stood wide open. Humming bees
sailed booming to and fro, like ships in a tropical trade-wind. And
through the lattice-work of the gray old apple-trees' branches (so
virginally clothed just now) clean English sunshine dappled all the
earth and grass in moving checkers of light and shade.

When the Nuthill party looked in through the gates of this delect