“Pooh! It wasn’t a wild duck at all. It was only a large water-hen. Not worth the trouble of shooting, certainly not of cooking. And then we had all the bother of getting out the gun, and tramping over the wet grass to get a fair shot, and, after we shot it, of rowing after it, to fish it up out of the loch. Wretched bird!”
Donald, imitating his master, regarded the booty with the utmost contempt, even kicking it with his foot as it lay, poor little thing! But no kicks could harm it now. Sunny only went up and touched it timidly, stroking its pretty, wet feathers with her soft little hand.
“Mamma, can’t it fly? why doesn’t it get up and fly away? And it is so cold. Might Sunny warm it?” as she had once tried to warm the only dead thing she ever saw,—a little field mouse lying on the garden walk at home, which she put in her pinafore and cuddled up to her little “bosie,” and carried about with her for half an hour or more.
Quite puzzled, she watched Donald carrying off the bird, and only half accepted mamma’s explanation that “there was no need to warm it,—it was gone to its bye-bye, and would not wake up any more.”
Though she was living at a shooting-lodge, this was the only dead thing Sunny had yet chanced to see, for there was so little game about that the gentlemen rarely shot any. But this morning one of them declared that if he walked his legs off over the mountains, he must go and have a try at something. So off he set, guided by Donald, while the rest of the party fished meekly for trout, or went along the hill-road on a still more humble hunt after blackberries. Sometimes they wondered about the stray sportsman, and listened for gun-shots from the hills,—the sound of a gun could be heard for so very far in this still, bright weather.
And when, at the usual dinner-hour, he did not appear, they waited a little while for him. They were going at length to begin the meal, when he was seen coming leisurely along the garden walk.
Eager were the inquiries of the master.
“Well,—any grouse?”
“No.”
“Partridges?”