The Meads seemed to breathe Rabbit.

He left his master, rushed hither and thither, barked and whined, scratched the soil, ran round the trees, lay cautiously motionless waiting for his foes, and now and then sat and laughed at himself for a ludicrous rabbit-bemused idiot.

He had a delightful afternoon...
Jeremy then was left entirely to himself and wandered about, looking for snowdrops under the trees, talking to himself, lost in a chain of ideas that included food and the sea and catapults and a sore finger and what school would be like and whether he could knock down the Dean's youngest, Ernest, whom he hated without knowing why.
He was lost in these thoughts, and had indeed wandered almost into the little wood that lies at the foot of the Orchards, when he heard a deep rich voice say: "I suppose you 'aven't such a thing as a match upon you anywhere, young gentleman ?" He liked to be asked for a match, a manly thing to be supposed to possess, but, of course, he hadn't one, owing to the stupidity of elderly relations, so he looked up and said politely: "No, I'm afraid I haven't." Then how his heart whacked beneath his waistcoat! There, standing in front of him, was the very figure of his dreams! Looking down upon Jeremy was a gentleman of middle-age whom experienced men of the world would have most certainly described as "seedy." Jeremy did not see his "seediness." He saw first his face, which was of a deep brown copper colour, turning here and there to a handsome purple; ill-shaved, perhaps, but with a fine round nose and a large smiling mouth.

He saw black curling hair and a yachting cap, faded this last and the white of it a dirty grey but set on jauntily at a magnificent angle.
He saw a suit of dark navy blue, this again faded, spotted too with many stains, ragged at the trouser-ends and even torn in one place above the elbow, fitting also so closely to the figure that it must have been at bursting point.

He saw round the neck a dark navy handkerchief, and down the front of the coat brass buttons that shook and trembled as their owner's chest heaved.
And what a chest! Jeremy had never conceived that any human being could be so thick and so broad.