a horn or a bug; and I wonder what this
here blond guy will be doing next.' So I saw nothing sensible was to be
had out of him, and I left him there, doddering.

"Then in about ten days, which was days of peace for brother and sister,
because they didn't have to go in keenly for any new way of killing
themselves off, what comes up but several crates of beagles, in charge
of their valet or tutor! I'd looked forward to something of a thrilling
or unknown character, and they turned out to be mere dogs; just little
brown-and-white dogs that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't been excited
by their names; kind of yapping mutts that some parties would poison off
if they lived in the same neighbourhood with 'em. They all had names
like Rex II and Lady Blessington, and so on; and each one had cost more
than any three steers I had on the place. What do you think of that?
They was yapping in their kennels when I first seen 'em, with the old
lady as excited as they was, and brother and sister trying to look
excited in order to please mother, and at least looking relieved because
no fatalities was in immediate prospect.

"I listened to the noise a while and acted nice by saying they was
undoubtedly the very finest beagles I'd ever laid eyes on--which was the
simple God's truth; and then I says won't she take one out of the cage
and let him beagle some, me not having any idea what it would be like?
But the old lady says not yet, because the costumes ain't come. I
thought at first it was the pups that had to be dressed up, but it seems
it was costumes for her and brother and sister to wear; so I asked a few
more silly questions and found out the mystery. It seemed the secret of
a beagle's existence was rabbits. Yes, sir; they was mad about rabbits
and went in keenly for 'em. Only they wouldn't notice one, I gathered,
if the parties that followed 'em wasn't dressed proper for it.

"Then we went in where we could hear each other without screaming, and
the lady tells me more about it, and how beagles is her last hope of her
chits ever amounting to anything in the great world of sport. If they
don't go in keenly for beagles she'll just have to give up and let
Nature take its course with the poor things. And she said these was
A-Number-One beagles, being sure to get a rabbit if one was in the
country. She'd just had 'em at a big fashionable country resort down
South, some place where the sport attracted much notice from the
simple-minded