I
thought at first it was the pups that had to be dressed up, but it seems
it was costumes for her and brother and sister to wear; so I asked a few
more silly questions and found out the mystery. It seemed the secret of
a beagle's existence was rabbits. Yes, sir; they was mad about rabbits
and went in keenly for 'em. Only they wouldn't notice one, I gathered,
if the parties that followed 'em wasn't dressed proper for it.
"Then we went in where we could hear each other without screaming, and
the lady tells me more about it, and how beagles is her last hope of her
chits ever amounting to anything in the great world of sport. If they
don't go in keenly for beagles she'll just have to give up and let
Nature take its course with the poor things. And she said these was
A-Number-One beagles, being sure to get a rabbit if one was in the
country. She'd just had 'em at a big fashionable country resort down
South, some place where the sport attracted much notice from the
simple-minded peasantry, and it hadn't been a good country for rabbits;
so the beagles had trooped into a backyard and destroyed a Belgian hare
that had belonged to a little boy, whose father come out and swore at
the costumed hunters in a very common manner, and offered to lick any
three of 'em at once.
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