fresh they were.’
‘What tastes?’ I asked. For however tedious exactitude may be to some, it is bread and jam to a scientist.
‘The brown earth,’ he said. ‘And sometimes chalk when one got down deeper, a totally different taste, not so pleasant, not quite so meaty. And then the sharp taste of the juicy roots of trees, that almost always have to be bitten in two while digging out a rabbit. And little unexpected tastes; dead leaves, and even a slug. They are innumerable, and all delightful. And all the while, you know, there is that full ample scent of the rabbit, growing deeper and deeper as you get farther in, till it is almost food to breathe it. The scent grows deeper, the air grows warmer, the home of the rabbit grows darker, and his feet when he moves sound like thunder; and all the while one’s own magnificent scratchings sweep towards him. Winds blowing in past one’s shoulders with scents from outside are forgotten. And at the end of it all is one’s rabbit. That is indeed a moment.’
‘Some dean,’ muttered Wrather. An interruption such as no student of science would welcome at such a time. But I forgave him, for he had served science already far better than he could know, and I hushed him with a look, and the Dean went on.
‘It may be,’ said the Dean, ‘though I cannot analyse it, but it may be that the actual eating of one’s rabbit is no more thrilling than that gradual approach as one gnaws one’s way through the earth. What would you say?’
‘I should say it was equal,’ I answered.
‘And you, Mr Wrather?’ said the Dean.
‘Not very good at definitions, you know,’ said Wrather. ‘But I will say one thing: one should never trust a teetotaller, or a man that wears elastic-sided boots.’
And I could see that he was warming towards the Dean; so that, trivial though such a thought is for a scientist to entertain in the middle of such researches, I saw that my little dinner-party would at any rate go well, as the saying is.
‘There is one thing to bear in mind on those occasions,’ said the Dean, fingering his collar with a touch of uneasiness, ‘and that is getting back again. When one’s dinner is over one wants to get back. And if the root of a tree, that one has perhaps bitten through, or a thin flint pointing the wrong way, should get under one’s collar, it may produce a very difficult situation.’
His face reddened a little over his wide white collar even at the thought. And it is not a situation to laugh at.
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