"How beautifully clean it all is!" exclaimed Nan.
"If you keep 'ounds, miss, you must keep 'em clean--or they won't be 'ealthy and fit to do their day's work. An' a day's hunting is a day's work for 'ounds, an' no mistake."
"How like a woman to remark about cleanliness first of all!" laughed Roger. "A man would have gone straight to look at the hounds before anything else!"
"I'm going now," replied Nan, approaching the bars of one of the enclosures.
It seemed to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of white and tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from the big throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a low growl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as a couple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement. At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached her gingerly, half-suspicious, half as though anxious to make friends, and, knowing no fear of animals, she thrust her hand through the bars and stroked the great heads and necks.
"Can't we go in? They're such dear things!" she begged.
"Better not," answered Roger. "They don't always like strangers."
"I'm not afraid," she replied mutinously. "Do just open the gate, anyway--_please_!"
"Well--" He yielded unwillingly, but Nan's eyes were rather difficult to resist when they appealed. "Open the gate, then, Denman."
He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the hounds narrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, "Down, Victor! Get down, Marquis!" when one or other of the great beasts playfully leapt up against Nan's side, pawing at her in friendly fashion. Meanwhile Denman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried a long-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.
Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eager caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as it caught her attention.
"Come back!" called Trenby hastily. "Don't go any further."
Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was so preoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardly penetrated her mind. Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of, "Oh, you beauty!" she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of the best hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome head and sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no disposition to join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.