And now we must go back to Timette and Ann and their adventure.
“The tree-climbing animal has been up here,” cried Ann, sniffing at the bark of a tree. And when they looked up they saw a brown squirrel peeping at them from a branch.
“Come down! come down! come down at once!” barked the puppies, but Mr. Squirrel was too wise for that. He knew that even with such baby dogs it wouldn’t be quite safe to trust himself on the ground.
“I don’t call that playing fair,” Ann called out, jumping up at the tree and wishing she could climb it. But the squirrel just sat tight.
Presently Timette smelt an enticing smell and dived into some bushes, while Ann anxiously watched and waited. She could hear Timette working about and breathing hard.
“Hi, hi, hi!” shrieked a big bird as it flew out. Timette dashed after it, but it rose in the air and left her looking very surprised. “Well, that was a sell!” she said.
Ann meanwhile was busy with her nose on the ground. There were a number of insects crawling about; they had no smell to speak of, but they moved quickly, which was rather fun. Once she chased a big hairy buzzing thing. It settled on a bit of heather and she nearly caught it, but luckily not quite, for it was a bumble bee.
“Except when only one bone’s there,
And Sis takes care that I shan’t share.”
Timette didn’t care for the beetles; they were feeble sport for a dog, she thought, and putting her nose in the air she caught a most wonderful smell. She gave a short bark of delight and started running about to find it on the ground. Ann looked up and she too caught the message and was as busy as Timette. It was a most enticing scent: furry and alive and gamey so that it promised real sport. As soon as the puppies really got on to it, they put their noses to the ground and followed it up, their little stumpy tails wagging hard. Their instinct told them it was not an animal that could hurt them, but one their mother and father and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had chased, so you can’t blame Timette and Ann for following up the scent of a rabbit.
But although rabbits are often killed by dogs, they are not silly enough to allow themselves to be caught by two young, inexperienced puppies. The rabbit they chased was an old one who had his wits too much about him to be even very afraid. You will laugh when I tell you that he didn’t even trouble himself to hurry and just ambled along to a hole and popped down it.
This hole had been the chief entrance to his burrow, and he and his big family had used it so often that it was worn quite wide and smooth. The artful old rabbit, however, only went a little way down it, then he turned to one side and went up another little passage and out into the wood and off again.
The puppies came dashing along, giving little short barks of delight at the sport. They followed the scent to the hole, and without stopping they plunged right into what looked to them like a dark tunnel. Of course, they were in much too great a hurry to notice the little passage where the old rabbit had turned aside, and just pushed on as hard as they could. The tunnel wound downhill and grew narrower and narrower as they went on. Timette was leading and she called back to Ann, “Can you smell anything? I have lost the scent.”
“So have I,” Ann answered, and then as she was feeling nervous in the dark, she added, “Let’s go back.”
“No, it’s all right!” cried Timette, “we had better go on, I can see daylight and smell the open air.”
This was a good thing, for the fat puppies would have found it very difficult to turn round in such a small space. At the end the hole grew so narrow that Timette had to squeeze to get through, and when Ann crawled out, some of the roof fell in and there was no more hole to be seen.