s coming; I hardly think she'd be so tuneful if she did.

Sometimes the geese, shut in the barn, raised an awful clatter, and the
horses and cattle complained about being kept from the sunshine and
fresh air. You couldn't blame them. It was a lovely day, and the big
upper door the pleasantest place. I didn't care if the fox hunters
never came, there was so much to see, hear, and smell. Everything was
busy making signs of spring, and one could become tired of ice and snow
after a while, and so hungry for summer that those first days which
were just hints of what was coming were almost better than the real
thing when it arrived. Bud perfume was stronger than last week, many
doves and bluebirds were calling, and three days more of such sunshine
would make cross-country riding too muddy to be pleasant. I sat there
thinking; grown people never know how much children do think, they have
so much time, and so many bothersome things to study out. I heard it
behind me, a long, wailing, bellowing roar, and my hood raised right up
with my hair. I was in the middle of the threshing floor in a second,
in another at the little west door, cut into the big one, opening it a
tiny crack to take a peep, and see how close they were.

I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily
closing in a circle around me. No doubt the mean old foxes wished then
they had let the Dorking roosters alone. Closer it came and more
dreadful. Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me;
even when I knew what was making them. And then away off, beyond
Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I could see a line of tiny specks
coming toward me, and racing flying things that must have been people
on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a
hiding place. No chance! Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and
father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were
going to get them; because they'd have no chance--Not with a solid line
of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback
racing after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the
pigs and lambs alone. In that awful roaring din, they would wish, Oh
how they would wish, they were birds and could fly! Fly back to their
holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they LIKED to live, and
no doubt they had little foxes there, that would starve when their
mammies were caught alive, to save their skins.

T