THE HUNTING OF FLOPPET.

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 69

THE HUNTING OF FLOPPET.

By

Elisabeth Kyle.

Dogs (thought Hambone, the black and white collie) should be taken for a walk regularly, by someone who doesn’t mind scrambling through hedges and who can run fast enough to head off a rabbit or two. Otherwise walks are apt to be lonely things, with humans dangling behind and sometimes even whistling one back when one has just found a specially fresh and interesting smell. Hambone (he got called that because of the enormous bone he fished out of the ashbin all by himself when he was six weeks old) lay in a patch of sun just in front of his kennel and wished very much that someone would come and take him for a walk. And just then Jimmy Marks came past. "What’s the good of a holiday,” Jimmy was saying to himself, “ if a fellow’s just got to go round with himself all the time?” And then he saw Hambone.and brightened. • Hambone got up, yelped once, and made his chain rattle so that Jimmy

would understand how it was that he couldn’t start just at that moment. “ Allow me,” Jimmy said, and unhooked the chain. “ That’s better,” Hambone barked, and set off at a run through the yard, over the road and across the end of a turnip field. He plunged through a hedge and then looked back and saw that Jimmy was blundering through as well, getting his clothes full of thorns and burrs and not minding at all. “ That’s the stuff! ” Hambone said to himself. “ None of your tiresome strolls along roads and whistles at the wrong time ” Just then Floppet, the grey hare, started up and ran right across his nose. “ Wait till I catch you! ” Hambone yelped happily and swerved after her.

“Now for some sport!” Jimmy thought, pounding along behind. He didn’t know that Hambone and Floppet were old friends. Hambone had chased her often, but never got up to her because she was like a streak of greased lightning for speed. So away the three went, Floppet in front, her long ears bent back by the wind, and Hambone lolloping happily after, while Jim crawled through hedges and cut off corners and fell and scraped his shins badly and lost one shoe and several buttons. But try as they could Floppet was much too fast for them. Presently she ran into a little wood and disappeared. -“Oho!” Hambone grinned. “ Now we have her! She doesn't know, but I know, that there’s a thick holly hedge right round the wood, so if one of us waits at the entrance while the other goes in ” , Jim wms so puffed he was glad to wait’ there while the other dived - into the wood. " I’ll get her started in a jiffy,” the dog thought. “ She can’t possibly hide long in a small place like this.” But even quite little woods are confusing, and, besides, it was getting dark; and all the pointy things that looked like Floppet’s ears turned out to be tufts of grass when you got to them. “ It’s no good,” thought Hambone, disappointed, “ though if we had caught Floppet we wouldn’t be able to run after her any more, so perhaps it’s all for the best. Now, what about home and supper? ” Jim was thinking about supper too. He chained Hambone up to the kennel again and shoved the biscuits where he could reach them. Then he stuck nis hands in his pockets and set off for home, thinking, “ I don’t see how Hambone didn’t, do better. It’s such a little wood. Next time he can watch, and I’ll go in.” And presently the moon came out, making the little wood more silvery-grey than ever. Floppet slipped from behind a large tree, saying to herself, “ One can stay hidden quite easily so long as one remembers to keep one’s ears out of sight! ” —Glasgow Weekly Herald.