tch!"

Christian turned a slow and expressionless eye upon her accuser,
indicating triumph.

"It's like this with that Nancy," continued Cottingham, with whom the
preaching habit, fostered by years of laying down the law on
subservient fields, was inveterate. "Her got that fond of Miss
Christeen, her follered 'er about, the way the ole lamb followed Mary,
as they say. And that artful she got! Wouldn't try a yard! An' she 'ad
the 'ole o' the young entry like 'erself. Any sort of a check, and
back they all comes an' looks at me, wi' their 'eads a one side, and
their sterns agoin' like this," he wagged a stubby fore-finger to and
fro in so precisely the right rhythm, that, stubby as it was, no magic
wand could evolve more instantly the scene to be presented; "an'
that's 'ow it'd be, th' old 'ounds workin' 'ard, and the young uns
lookin' like they 'as nothin' to do only admire of me!"

"Quite right, too!" truckled Christian.

"Ah, Miss Christeen, I'm too used to soft soap, I am!"

"Well, you know, Cottingham, it was _I_ cured Nancy when she took
to following _me_ about." She turned to Larry. "Luckily, I broke
my wrist, and by the time I was able to ride again she had given me up
and taken to hunting."

"That's what you says, Miss," said Cottingham; "but I reckon what her
wanted was what her got from _me_--a good 'idin'!"

Having made his point, Cottingham, a true artist, departed at the
little toddling run that in kennels indicates devotion to duty,
combined with a slippery floor.

"I had forgotten about your breaking your wrist--I remember about my
own, right enough!" said Larry. "What rotten luck!"

"Oh, it's dead sound now," said Christian. "Look!" She stood up, and
held out both her slender hands to him across the intervening hounds'
backs. "I bet you don't know which is which!"

Larry took a hand in each of his, and flexed the wrists. "The left,
wasn't it?" he said, without releasing them. "Not that I see any
difference, only I remember now that I heard you had smashed the same
one that I did."

"It did hurt--horribly! I expect you know. It hurts still a little,
sometimes." She looked at him for sympathy. She was nearly eighteen
now, and had caught him up in height, so that her brown eyes looked
straight into his blue ones.

"Poor little paw!" said Larry patronizingly; he was going to be
twenty-one in a week, and felt immeasurably older than Christian. "Oh,
by the way, I forgot! I mustn't say paw. Must