"Charity, Lady Maud," began the gallant warrior.
"That is not your bird, Captain Weeks! Mr. Lockhart, my cousin Eustace, and the professor have all blazed away at that poor joke already. Of course, your gun would bring it down, but please be merciful. Let it go for another day."
"That reminds me, Gordon," said the captain confidentially to Lady Maud's cousin, when the laugh had ceased, "I was speaking to old Snapshot about Roederay, and he assures me that the birds lie like stones in that part. Something, he said, to do with the Gulf Stream--but I don't know much of these scientific things, Lady Maud. Only I assure you he declares you can kick 'em up and shoot 'em like chickens on the last day of the season."
There was a solemn pause. The advantages of Roederay seemed exhausted on all sides.
"If some one will give me his arm," said Lady Maud, rising, "I will go upstairs--to Paradise, perhaps, Mr. Lockhart. I really must say how do you do to our hostess before going on to the next."
"Any luck, Rick?" called a lady sitting on the doorstep of Eval House to a young man coming up the ferry-path. His rod was balanced level in his hand, his head bent forward against half a gale of wind, which, after sweeping the grass slopes into silvery waves, raced with white horses over the greener sea beyond. Yet on the doorstep, with the stone house betwixt you and the nor'west, the day was warm and still as any autumn day can be when a bright sun shines clear out of a brilliant blue sky.
She was a very small lady, looking all the smaller because the energy expressed in every line of face and figure suggested its adequacy for the direction of a far larger mass of matter. Looking still smaller at that particular moment by reason of her being overwhelmed by a fleecy lamb she was endeavouring to feed with a teapot. For the rest, a lady long past youth, yet with sufficient traces of it left to show that it had been pre-eminently attractive.
"Luck, Aunt Will? Why, yes, the best of luck. I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world."
"Who will that be now? And is it twenty or twenty-one you are next month? Twenty-one, is it--yes: time passes. Then as you are so near man's estate it won't be Maclead's niece from Glasgow; she is too red in the face. Nor Katie Macqueen; you've seen her too often. Nor me, either, Rick, though I used to be called that sometimes."