* * * * *

Summer vacation again, after a winter and spring's weary grind in
school.

Aunt Rachel wrote to Granma that they would be glad to have me come over
to Halton for a visit.

Granma let me, after I had pleaded for a long while,--but it was with
great reluctance, warning me of Phoebe.

* * * * *

Aunt Rachel, Uncle Joshua, Cousin Phoebe and cousin Paul lived in a big,
square barn-like structure. Its unpainted, barren bulk sat uneasily on
top of a bare hill where the clay lay so close to the top-soil that in
wet weather you could hardly labour up the precipitous path that led to
their house, it was so slippery.

As I floundered upward in the late spring rain, gaining the bare summit
under the drizzly sky, a rush of dogs met me. They leaped and slavered
and jumped and flopped and tumbled and whined all about me and over me
... ten of them ... hound dogs with flop-ears and small, red-rimmed eyes
... skinny creatures ... there was no danger from them; but they planted
their mud-sticky paws everywhere in a frenzy of welcome.

"A hound ain't got no sense onless he's a-huntin'," drawled Paul, as his
great boot caught them dextrously under their bellies and lifted them
gently, assiduously, severally, in different directions from me....