“How many birds did you actually see?”
“Well, I killed two brace and a half the first day.”
“Hatched under a hen, and let out for a foretaste.”
“And there was one old blackcock.”
“That blackcock! There are serious doubts whether it is a phantom bird, or whether Rory keeps it tame as a decoy. You didn’t kill it?”
“No.”
“If you had, you might have boasted of an achievement,” said Allen.
“The spell would have been destroyed,” added Jock. “But you did not let him finish. Did you say you saw the blackcock?”
“I am not sure; I think I heard it rise once, but the keeper was always seeing it.”
Everybody but Essie was in fits of laughing at Cecil’s frank air of good-humoured, self-defensive simplicity, and Armine observed—