Sally peacocked it up and down before her admiring satellites, until suddenly there rang through the parsonage a vigorous expression uttered in a rich brogue, and at the same instant a large, red-faced woman rushed out of the kitchen door and appeared round the corner of the house.
Sally arrested her parade, paused, showed an inclination to flee, paused again, then with a gibe for which she dived back into her Blueberry Ally vocabulary, fled from the irate “work-lady,” who had unwittingly furnished forth the fine feathers in which Sally was strutting. Mary promptly gave chase, and that too with an agility which her bulk belied. The area of the hunting ground was not very great being bounded by the prim palings of the little garden, but no landscape gardener ever made more of his space than did Sally. She doubled and turned and twisted, and eluded Mary’s grasp by a hand-breadth, as she darted under her outstretched arms, but Sally was very unwise, for she used her breath in taunts and gibes, whilst Mary pursued the dishonoured flounces of her Sunday gown in a silence which was the more ominous because of her wonted volubility.
Sally was getting slightly winded, and was wishing she could get the gate open and give Mary a straightaway lead, but she had her doubts of the gate, sometimes it opened and sometimes it didn’t. Sally knew if it was obstinate that her fate was sealed; she was casting about for another means of escape when her adherents began to take a share in the proceedings. First, little Jim Shinar, standing rooted to the spot, saw the chase descending upon him; Sally dodged him, but Mary was too close behind and too eager for her prey to change her route quickly, so she charged into him and went over like a shot. Jim gave a howl, and Mary gathered herself up, and, breaking silence for the first time, ordered him home in a way not fit for ears polite, and then resumed the chase; but the dachshunds, seeing their playmate little Jim in the thick of it, concluded that there might be some fun in it for them also, and promptly precipitated themselves upon Mary in a way which impeded her progress so much that Sally was able to make the gate and get it half open before Mary shook herself free, but when she did she came like a whirlwind towards the gate, cheered on by the collie, whose excitement had at last slipped the collar and vented itself in sharp barks. Sally whisked through the gate, but Mary was at her heels. Sally felt the breath of the open, and knew if she escaped Mary’s first sprint that she was safe. So with a derisive taunt she sprang forward, jubilant, but alas, in the excitement of the crisis Sally let go her hold of the long skirt, which immediately fell about her heels, and in an instant the chase was ended, for Mary, panting, blown, and enraged beyond expression, was on Sally in a second, and fell with her as the long skirt laid her low—the dachshunds arrived a little later, and the collie, seduced by their evil example, threw decorum to the winds, and seizing an end of the bright flounce where it fluttered under the angry clutch of Mary, he tugged at it with might and main, and this was the scene which greeted Sidney, as, returning from his walk, he approached his own gate.