All the men who liked hunting, and nearly all the older boys, and some of the younger whose folks did not care, had guns. Hunting played as important a part in a Beaufort boy’s program as did swimming and rowing.
Although Ned had mastered the two sports last mentioned, it did not seem to his mother that she ever could consent to his taking up the first—hunting with a gun.
Time had proved to her that there were plenty of dangers to which Ned was exposed, without adding to the list powder and lead.
Ned argued for; his mother pleaded against; Mr. Miller listened and smiled, and was strictly non-committal. Down deep in his mind he knew that in the end Ned would win the day.
“Well, Helen, I don’t see but what we’ll have to give the boy the gun,” he remarked to his wife, when they were alone, one evening.
“Oh, Will!” groaned Mrs. Miller, in piteous tones.
“But you see, my dear, it will be very hard to keep him from being with other boys who have guns,” explained her husband, “and it would be better to let him have a gun of his own, and understand how to use it, than to leave him to pick up what he can, and maybe get injured through his ignorance.”
“Oh, Will!” again appealed Mrs. Miller. “It doesn’t seem as though I could agree to it.”
Then mother-like, that her boy might live his strong, sturdy life, she consented.