"Better go home." "We're not blown at all," said Dick, trotting on abreast of the whipper- in; "Coote's lace came undone, that was all." "Yes; we should have been in the next field if it hadn't," said the owner of the luckless lace.
The Harriers smiled, and for a minute or two the pack swung in an even line across the field.
Then Coote, anxious not to crowd anyone, let half a dozen or so of the Fifth go in front; and Dick and Georgie, generously considering that it would be rather low to leave their short-winded comrade in the lurch, dropped behind the leading rank in order to be nearer him.
In a minute more all anxiety Coote may have felt as to crowding any one was at an end.

He was a yard or two in the rear of the last man, with a stitch in his side, beginning in his inmost soul to wonder whether the new "Sociables" Club was such a very good thing after all.
Dick and Georgie, as they gradually sacrificed their prospect of being in at the death, and fell back to the support of their ally, waxed very contemptuous of stitch in a fellow's side.

They knew what it meant.

It was a pity Coote had started if he was liable to that sort of thing.
His stitch had cost the "Firm" a whole field already.

However, they were not selfish; they must back him up even if it meant coming in at the tail of the hunt; though, to be sure, the pace Mansfield, Cresswell, and a few others were going at was one which couldn't be kept up, and the "Firm," as soon as the stitch was out, might be in the running after all.
By dint of persuasions, threats, and imputations, Coote's stitch did come out; but before it was gone the last of the pack were seen going over the ridge.
"We're out of it," said Georgie, despondently.
"Not a bit of it," said Dick, who was getting his second wind and felt like holding on.