"I—" says Terence, to gain time, and because speech of some kind at this moment is absolutely necessary—"I didn't think——"
"Of course you didn't think, Terence, or you would not have recorded your poor aunts, in your secret thoughts, as hard-hearted and ungenerous. If you had told us openly that Mitson, the coast-guard, had lent you a gun (as I strongly suspect, and indeed felt sure from the first moment was the case), we should not have been at all angry, only naturally anxious that you should use an instrument of death with caution. But you have no confidence in us, Terence."
Intense relief fills the breasts of the three Beresfords. Remorse that the trusting nature of the old ladies should be so abused touches Monica keenly, but of the other two I must again declare with grief that they feel nothing but a sense of delivery from peril, and no contrition at all for their past suspicions.
"I thought you might be angry, aunt," says Terence. He is looking very dirty indeed, and his hands are grimy, and altogether even Monica cannot bring herself to feel proud of him. There is, too, a covert desire for laughter about him that exasperates her terribly.
"Not angry, my dear; only nervous. I hope you know how to load, and that. I remember a cousin of ours blowing off his first finger and thumb with a powder-horn."
"This is a breech-loader, auntie," says Monica, softly.
"Eh? One of those new-fangled things I have read of. Oh, well, my dear boy, I daresay there is more need for circumspection. Let me look at it. Ah! very handsome, indeed! I had no idea coast-guards were so well supplied; and yet I cling to the old guns that your grandfather used to use."
"Did you shoot anything?" asks Miss Penelope, who has grown quite interested, and regards Terence with a glance of pride.
"Only one thrush," says Terence, drawing the dilapidated corpse from his pocket, "and a sparrow, and one rabbit I fired at and wounded mortally, I know, but it got away into its hole and I lost it."
"Rabbits!" says Miss Priscilla. "Am I to understand—nay, I hope I am not to understand—that you crossed the stile into Coole?"