The carriage had
been gone now a full quarter of an hour, and it must have got some
distance ahead, but he would do his best to catch it up, and there were
short cuts which would perhaps give him a chance. He was off at once,
and from the top of the hill just past the Rectory paddock he could see
the carriage, looking very small, on a bit of road which showed perhaps a
mile and a half in front of him.
One of the most popular amusements at Roughborough was an institution
called "the hounds"--more commonly known elsewhere as "hare and hounds,"
but in this case the hare was a couple of boys who were called foxes, and
boys are so particular about correctness of nomenclature where their
sports are concerned that I dare not say they played "hare and hounds";
these were "the hounds," and that was all. Ernest's want of muscular
strength did not tell against him here; there was no jostling up against
boys who, though neither older nor taller than he, were yet more robustly
built; if it came to mere endurance he was as good as any one else, so
when his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to "the hounds"
as his favourite amusement. His lungs thus exercised had become
developed, and as a run of six or seven miles across country was not more
than he was used to, he did not despair by the help of the short cuts of
overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching Ellen at the station
before the train left.
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