I-VI

One afternoon we were having our reading
lesson on the warm, grassy bank where the
badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight,
but there was a shiver of coming winter in the
air. I had seen ice on the little horse-pond that
morning, and as we went through the garden
we found the tall asparagus, with its red ber-
ries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy green.

Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in
her cotton dress and was comfortable only
when we were tucked down on the baked
earth, in the full blaze of the sun. She could
talk to me about almost anything by this time.
That afternoon she was telling me how highly
esteemed our friend the badger was in her part
of the world, and how men kept a special kind
of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him.
Those dogs, she said, went down into the hole
after the badger and killed him there in a ter-
rific struggle underground; you could hear the
barks and yelps outside. Then the dog dragged
himself back, covered with bites and scratches,
to be rewarded and petted by his master. She

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v?