I had picked up the “Guide to Highland Shootings” again which my sister had so unceremoniously plucked from me, and idly compared the rent and attractions of Achnaleish with other places that were to let.
“Seems cheap, too,” I said. “Why, here’s another place, just the same sort of size and bag, for which they ask £500; here’s another at £550.”
Jim helped himself to coffee.
“Yes, it does seem cheap,” he said. “But, of course, it’s very remote: it took me a good three hours from Lairg, and I don’t suppose I was driving very noticeably below the legal limit. But it’s cheap, as you say.”
Now, Madge (who is my wife) has her prejudices. One of them—an extremely expensive one—is that anything cheap has always some hidden and subtle drawback, which you discover when it is too late. And the drawback to cheap houses is drains or offices—the presence, so to speak, of the former, and the absence of the latter. So I hazarded these.
“No, the drains are all right,” said Jim, “because I got the certificate of the inspector, and as for offices, really I think the servants’ parts are better than ours. No—why it’s so cheap, I can’t imagine.”
“Perhaps the bag is overstated,” I suggested.
Jim again shook his head.
“No, that’s the funny thing about it,” he said. “The bag, I am sure, is understated. At least, I walked over the moor for a couple of hours, and the whole place is simply crawling with hares. Why, you could shoot five hundred hares alone on it.”
“Hares?” I asked. “That’s rather queer, so far up, isn’t it?”