There followed a stream of gossip about the health of various animals, and about the way Marlow, the head-keeper, was looking forward to shooting Cherrington Long Covert, and how much afraid he had been that Tony would not be back before the end of the month, and how glad he was that he was back, in the middle of which Constantia informed Dorothy that there was a meet at Five Tree Farm two days hence and asked her if she was going to hunt for the rest of the season. Arabella kicked her sister so clumsily that Dorothy noticed the warning, and with a sudden impulse to risk all, even death, in the attempt, she replied that of course she intended to hunt for the rest of the season. Tony began to protest, but she cut him short.
"My dear boy, when I lived with my grandmother I always hunted. And I've kept up riding ever since."
"Well, that's topping," exclaimed Connie.
"Yes, that really is topping," echoed Arabella.
"But alas! I don't shoot," Dorothy confessed, "so if it won't bore you too much you'll have to give me lessons."
"Oh, rather," began Connie, immediately. "Well, you see, the most important thing is not to look across your barrels. I find that most people—Well, for instance, supposing you put up a woodcock...."
"I say, Connie, shut up, shut up," Tony exclaimed. "You can't begin at once. You'll put our eyes out in the car with that stick."
The shooting-lesson was postponed; and clambering into the car, in another five minutes they had all reached the house. Dorothy's first emotion at sight of the dowager was relief at finding that she was quite a head shorter than herself. In spite of Napoleon, height is, on the whole, an advantage to human beings in moments of stress. Dorothy had involuntarily imagined her mother-in-law as a tall, beaked woman with a cold and flashing eye, in fact with all the attributes the well-informed novelist usually awards to dowagers. This dowdy little woman, whose slight resemblance to a beaver was emphasized by wearing a cape made of that animal's fur, had to stand on tiptoe to greet her daughter-in-law, and it was unreasonable to be frightened of a woman who in an emotional crisis had to stand on tiptoe. Nevertheless, Dorothy was sincerely grateful for her kindly welcome, and took the first opportunity of whispering some of her hopes and fears for the future to her mother-in-law, who invited her, after tea, to come up-stairs to her den and have a little talk. When they entered the small square room in an angle of the house twilight was still sapphire upon the window-panes, one of which looked out over the park and the other mysteriously down into the grove of pines. Fussing about with matches, the dowager explained apologetically that she preferred always to trim and light her own lamp.
"One gets these little fads living in the depths of the country."
"Of course," Dorothy agreed, planning with herself some similar fad for the near future.