continued in our next" that Miss Jones had
only the vaguest idea of what it was all about. Her mind therefore
wandered, as indeed, did always the minds of Mary's audiences, and Mary
never noticed but stared with the rapt gaze of the creator through her
enormous glasses, out into an enchanted world of golden princesses,
white elephants and ropes and ropes of rubies. Miss Jones meanwhile
thought of her young days, her illnesses and a certain hat that she
had seen in Thornley's windows in the High Street. Jeremy, attended by
Hamlet, hunted amongst the trees for snowdrops.

Hamlet had been worried ever since he could remember by a theory about
rabbits. He had been told, of course, about rabbits by his parents, and
it had even been suggested to him that he would be a mighty hunter of
the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but
never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded
that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that
certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could,
his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him
at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting
the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts
haunt the convinced and trusting spiritualist, so did rabbits haunt
Hamlet. He dreamt of Rabbits at night, he tasted Rabbits in his food, he
saw them scale the air and swim the stream--now, he was close on their
trail, now he had them round that tree, up that hill, down that hole...
sitting tranquilly in front of the schoolroom fire he would scent them;
always they eluded him, laughed at him, mocked him with their stumpy
tails. They were rapidly becoming the obsession of his nights and days.

Upon this afternoon the air was full of Rabbit. The Meads seemed to
breathe Rabbit. He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked
and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously
motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed
at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot. He had a delightful
afternoon...

Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for
snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas
that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and
what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's
youngest, Ernest, whom he hated wit