Luncheon is served, maam, said the butler. He
pointed at the table;he directed the footman.
Again the door opened, pushed feebly this time. The
butler and the footmanstood watching, like servers at a feast. It was cold,with fog
in the air, and Rosalind was sitting over the fire, sewing.
Shots rang out inthe wood under the
window.
The mare, they said, put her footin a hole. Lappin,
Lappin, King Lappin, she repeated. The Duchess of Lambourne waited his pleasure;the
Duchess of Lambourne, daughter of a hundred Earls.
Well, when he was eatingtoast he looked like a
rabbit. There they were, ten pearls on the blotting-paper on the table. He
straightened his tieat the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. She felt that her
iciclewas being turned to water.
He was not a tame rabbit,whatever he was. Rather a
small hare; silver grey; with big bright eyes?
To-day, said Ernest, twitching his nose as he bit
the end off hiscigar, he chased a hare. Dalloway was married, gave parties; wasnt
his sort at all. Slate blue wereMiss Rashleighs; Miss Antonias red, like port. And
he waited there, flattened against the wall. Beads ofperspiration stood out on the
mens foreheads.
The butler and the footmanstood watching, like
servers at a feast.
There were the black rabbits and the red; there
were theenemy rabbits and the friendly.
She dipped her spoon in a plate of cleargolden
fluid. It was onlyErnest, turning his key in the door.
The shooters had moved now from the Kings Ride to
the Home Woods. Down it poured, down, down, down, in straight rods whipping the
windows. Deftly the footman whippedit from her, and old Miss Rashleigh raised her
knife. And their hands gripped their handslike the claws of dead birds gripping
nothing.