"He must have fallen asleep," he thought; and so with infinite care and cunning he crawled down the hedge-side, and came upon Dick from behind.
"Dick, why don't you shoot?" he said in a whisper.
"Hush!" said Dick, "they look so pretty, I don't like to disturb them. Look at the young ones frisking about."
"Give me the gun," said Frank.
Dick passed it to him through the hedge, and Frank, taking aim at two fine rabbits which happened to be in a line, shot them dead.
"I have had more pleasure in watching them than you have had in shooting them, Frank," said Dick.
It must not be thought that Dick was mawkishly sentimental, but he had not the organ of destructiveness that Frank had, and it was, as he said, quite as much sport to him to see and watch birds and animals as to shoot them. Therefore, when the others went flapper-shooting their order of going ranged in this wise:—
Frank, armed with his double-barrelled muzzle-loader (for breech-loaders had not yet come into general use), took one side of the dyke, and Jimmy, with a single-barrel he had bought second-hand, took the other side, while Dick took the punt along the dyke ready to act the part of a retriever.
It was one of those still, hot days when the distant woods lie brooding in a blue haze. The labours of the breeding-season over, the birds were resting silently, and there was no sound but the monotonous hum of insect-life. On the wide marshes all objects were distorted by the quivering of the evaporating moisture, and the long straight dykes and drains gleamed back defiantly at the sun. Frank and Jimmy trudged valiantly through the rustling flags and reeds by the water-side, and Dick pulled the punt along a little behind them.
"Shooting is no fun this weather," said Frank, stopping to wipe the perspiration from his brow.