“Oh!” I said, “I suppose,” I said, “in those days bowls were not considered a low form of amusement. Though if ever my poor dear mother and father did have to call words, it would be over his weakness for bowls and skittles as a waste of time and leading to betting and drink. And as for Shakespeare, I call it all very well for literary swells with nothing else to do,” I said, “but what the Halls cater for is the business gentleman who drops in with a pal to hear the popular favorite in a ten-o’clock turn over a cigar and a small Scotch. And gardening never was much in my line,” I said, “though when a child it was my favorite amusement to grow mustard and cress on damp flannel. Hunting is my passion,” I said, “and as Wretchingham has told me you keep a first-class stable of hunters and hacks, besides carriage beasts, I hope to show your lordship that I shan’t disgrace you,” I said, and asked him when the next meet would be?
The Earl’s old eyebrows went up to the top of his aristocratic bald forehead as he said not until October, and then only for cubbing, and the two girls flushed up red, trying not to laugh, and wriggled in their chairs, and Lady Blandish said in her nice nasty way that every day brought innovations, and one might as well ride to hounds in August as skate on artificial ice in May.
“And if you are fond of sport,” Lord Blandish said, “we could possibly find you some fishing. Don’t you think so, my dear?” and he looked at his wife.
“I have my salmoning costume with me,” I said, just to let them know, “and a rod, and everything. And I suppose Wretchie won’t object,” I said, giving the poor thing a smile, “to prompt me if I am fluffy in the business.”
“Dear me!” said Lady Blandish, “how stupid of me not to have explained before,” she said, “that this is a trouting County and not a salmon County, and that such trout as there are run very small.” And the two girls choked again in the most underbred way I ever.
I said I’d fall back on golf, having a killing get-up in my basket, but there wasn’t a links within miles, Lady Blandish said, and how sorry she was. All the hot-weather entertainment she had it in her power to offer me in their quiet country home, she said, was an occasional flower-show, or County cricket-match, or a garden-party, or a friendly dinner with people who were not _too_ exacting. In September there would be the birds, but then I would not be there. It was too unfortunate, she said. Not that her saying so took me in much.