“And a cool hand he seems too,” returned Coverdale, scowling at the delinquent, who stood quietly reloading his gun, as though he were “monarch of all he surveyed,”—“however, I’m not going to lose my temper about it; it’s a great object with me, just now, to conciliate all the neighbouring farmers.”
“Then are you going to give him carte blanche to spiflicate rabbits when and where he likes?” inquired his friend.
“Not a bit of it!” was the reply, “I mean to put a stop once for all to such practices; but there is a quiet way of managing these matters quite as effectual as putting oneself into a rage.”
“Don’t be a week about it, that’s all—come to the point at once, there’s a good fellow, for I want to knock over another rabbit or two before my Bucephalus arrives,” rejoined Hazlehurst.
Thus urged, Coverdale advanced towards the stranger, and slightly raising his wide-awake as he approached him, said with an air of Grandisonian politeness—“Mr. Styles I presume?”
“Yes, young man, my name’s Styles. What’s yourn?” was the unceremonious reply.
He does not know me, thought Harry: now for astonishing him—rather! “My name, sir, is—ahem!—Henry Coverdale, of Coverdale Park, at your service.” He paused to watch the effect of this announcement. Ha! I thought so, he trembles, he is—why, confound the scoundrel! I do believe he’s grinning—he can’t have understood me—“My name is Coverdale, I say, sir.”
“Well then, Mr. Coverdale, if that’s your name, the sooner you take yourself back to Coverdale Park the better I shall be pleased, for I’m a shooting rabbits, and your jabbering scares the creeturs,” was the astounding rejoinder.
Coverdale could scarcely believe his ears; however, he contrived by a strong effort to subdue his rising passion, as he answered; “If, as I imagine, you are the son of old Farmer Styles, of Wild Acre, you must be aware, sir, that the farm your father rents is my property, and that the rabbits you are shooting are my rabbits; I must, therefore, trouble you to hand over the one you have just killed, and to abstain from shooting entirely, except on any occasion when I may invite you to join me, or otherwise give you permission.”
“I knows this, that father and I have got a thirty years’ lease to run, and that when I wants a day’s rabbiting, I means to take it, whether you likes it, or whether you doesn’t. Why, the old Admiral never said a word agen it; but he was something like a gentleman, he was!” was the surly answer.