"But why? It is so warm and light, and such a little way!"
"You have been often there. Let us turn down this side of the meadow, and see where it will lead to."
That it leads directly away from Coole there cannot be the least doubt; and the little martyr treading the ground she would not, feels with an additional pang of disappointment that the fulfilment of her duty does not carry with it the thrill of rapture that ought to suffuse her soul. No, not the faintest touch of satisfaction at her own heroism comes to lighten the bitter regret she is enduring as she turns her back deliberately on the river and its chances. She feels only sorrow, and the fear that some one will think her hard-hearted, and she could cry a little, but for Kit and shame's sake.
"Monica, who is that?" exclaims Kit, suddenly, staring over the high bank, beside which they are walking, into the field beyond. Following her glance, Monica sees a crouching figure on the other side of this bank, but lower down, stealing cautiously, noiselessly, towards them, as though bent on secret murder. A second glance betrays the fact that it is Terence, with—yes, most positively with a gun!
"Where on earth did he get it?" says Kit; and, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, she scrambles up the bank, and calls out, "Terry, here we are! Come here! Where did you get it?" at the top of her fresh young lungs.
As she does so, a little gray object, hitherto unseen by her, springs from among some green stuffs, and, scudding across the field into the woods of Coole beyond, is in a moment lost to view.
"Oh, bother!" cries Terry, literally dancing with rage; "I wouldn't doubt you to make that row just when I was going to fire. I wish to goodness you girls would stay at home, and not come interfering with a fellow's sport. You are always turning up at the wrong moment, and just when you're not wanted!—indeed you ever are!"
These elegant and complimentary remarks he hurls at their heads, as though with the wish to annihilate them. But they haven't the faintest effect: the Misses Beresford are too well accustomed to his eloquence to be dismayed by it. They treat it, indeed, as a matter of course, and so continue their inquiries uncrushed.
"Terry, where did you get this gun?" asks Monica, as breathless with surprise as Kit. "Is it"—fearfully—"loaded? Oh! don't!—don't point it this way! It will surely go off and kill somebody."
Here she misses her footing and slips off the high bank, disappearing entirely from view, only to reappear again presently, flushed but uninjured.