supper, and generally behaved as a good mate should in the matter of
helping to make a new home. And that is the plain truth in the matter of
how Desdemona found her nest.




VII

DESDEMONA FORGETS HER MANNERS


It has been recorded that, as the weeks slipped by after Desdemona's
first little term of absence from her home at Shaws, she grew daily more
sedate in her manner and less given to the irresponsible activities of
hound youth.

It was also noticed that she developed a habit of carrying off all her
best bones, or other solid comestibles, instead of despatching them
beside her dish as her sophisticated habit had always been. What was not
known, even to the astute Bates, was that the most of such eatables were
laboriously carried over close upon four miles of downland by the Lady
Desdemona, for ultimate storage in her cave, where, a little
reluctantly, she devoured some of them and stowed away others to be more
or less devoured by insects, and, it may be, by prowling stoats and
other vermin, during the bloodhound's periods of residence in her own
proper home.

Finn accompanied his mate, as a matter of course, upon most of her
pilgrimages to the cave. But, somewhat to his chagrin, he found, as time