“Oh, that’s lovely!” she said. “They’ll be sure there’s somebody there and wonder who it can be. Yes, see how they are turning their heads in that direction.”
“Can you see the expression o’ ony o’ their countenances, bit lassie? I canna, for my eyes are growing old.”
“Yes, sir. I can see that Miss Keith looks startled and astonished and seems to be questioning Uncle Harold, and that Mr. Croly is laughing and trying his best to catch a peep at the trumpeter. The others I think look as if they are trying to keep from laughing. I dare say they see you here, sir, and can guess what it means. Oh, there’s our Prince! He seems to be in search of the trumpeter.”
Even as Lulu spoke she was startled by another bugle-blast seemingly directly behind them, or from the branches of the tree under which they sat.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, turning quickly to look behind her; then with a merry laugh, “I wasn’t expecting your bugler to come so very near, sir.”
But the concluding words were almost drowned in Prince’s loud bark as he came bounding toward them, evidently in search of the intruding bugler.
“Find him, Prince, find him as fast as you can and teach him not to intrude into the Ion grounds,” laughed Lulu.
But the bugler’s notes had already died away and Prince’s bark changed to a low growl as he searched for him here and there, but vainly.
“So you have a bugler on the estate, eh?” Croly was saying, with an inquiring glance at Harold. “One of your darkies, I presume? They are a musical race, I know.”
“They are,” Harold replied with unmoved countenance.
“I thought the notes musical and pleasant,” observed Miss Keith, “but they do not seem to have taken the fancy of your dog.”
“Prince—a fine fellow, by the way—is not our dog, but belongs to Max Raymond,” said Herbert. “No, he does not seem to fancy the intruder, whoever he may be.”
“Hark!” cried Rosie, “the bugler is at it again.”
“And this time it is a Scotch air,” remarked Mary Keith. “How soft and sweet it sounds! But it comes from quite another quarter; yet I do not know how the bugler can have changed his position so entirely without any of us catching sight of him as he went.”
“It does seem odd,” said Croly. But his words were nearly drowned in the loud bark of Prince as he rushed in the new direction, with evident intent to oust the intruder this time. His effort was, however, as complete a failure as the former one. The notes of the bugle died softly away, the dog sniffed about the tree from which they had seemed to come, but finally gave it up and trotted away in the direction of the house. “Point out that bugler to me when we come across him, won’t you, Harold?”