“Well, I don’t know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck. What do you say, Holt?”
I said I’d like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had no gun—being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled. There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.
“Can you shoot, Mr Holt?” said the youngster, planting both elbows on the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.
“Well, yes, I can shoot,” I said. “Moderately, that is.”
“But you’re out from England,” went on the cub, as though that settled the matter.
“George, you little ass, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles and Punch for us,” said Brian. “You can ride Jack.”
A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.
“I’m afraid you’ll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt,” said Beryl. “He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought. They are the little ones, you see.”
Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural—reserving my own opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other—well “boy” to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a boy of George Matterson’s age, well—to fit him, my vocabulary has never yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.
“You’d better have a shot gun, Holt,” said Brian, as we started. “I always use one in thick bush; it’s all close shooting.”