hopped out of its basket, she began to thank him
for the flowers. Indeed she seemed indefatigable in shewing her
gratitude, smelt them, stood a little way off looking at them, then
thanked him again. Mr. Tebrick (and this was all part of his plan) then
took a vase and went to find some water for them, but left the flowers
beside her. He stopped away five minutes, timing it by his watch and
listening very intently, but never heard the rabbit squeak. Yet when he
went in what a horrid shambles was spread before his eyes. Blood on the
carpet, blood on the armchairs and antimacassars, even a little blood
spurtled on to the wall, and what was worse, Mrs. Tebrick tearing and
growling over a piece of the skin and the legs, for she had eaten up all
the rest of it. The poor gentleman was so heartbroken over this that he
was like to have done himself an injury, and at one moment thought of
getting his gun, to have shot himself and his vixen too. Indeed the
extremity of his grief was such that it served him a very good turn, for
he was so entirely unmanned by it that for some time he could do nothing
but weep, and fell into a chair with his head in his hands, and so kept
weeping and groaning.

After he had been some little while employed in this dismal way, his
vixen, who had by this time bolted down the rabbit skin, head, ears and
all, came to him and putting her paws on his knees, thrust her long
muzzle into his face and began licking him. But he, looking at her now
with different eyes, and seeing her jaws still sprinkled with fresh
blood and her claws full of the rabbit's fleck, would have none of it.

But though he beat her off four or five times even to giving her blows
and kicks, she still came back to him, crawling on her belly and
imploring his forgiveness with wide-open sorrowful eyes. Before he had
made this rash experiment of the rabbit and the flowers, he had promised
himself that if she failed in it he would have no more feeling or
compassion for her than if she were in truth a wild vixen out of the
woods. This resolution, though the reasons for it had seemed to him so
very plain before, he now found more difficult to carry out than to
decide on. At length after cursing her and beating her off for upwards
of half-an-hour, he admitted to himself that he still did care for her,
and even loved her dearly in spite of all, whatever pretence he affected
towards her. When he had acknowledged this he looked up at her and met