“Yes.”
“It’s such a beauty. Single barrel, with a flint lock, so that it never wants no caps, and it comes out of the stock quite easy, and the barrel unscrews in the middle, and the ramrod too, so that you can put it all in your pocket, and nobody knows that you’re carrying a gun.”
“But what’s the good of a gun here at school?”
“What? Oh, you don’t know because it’s all new to you. Why, there are hares in the fields, and pheasants in the coppices, and partridges in the hop-gardens, and the rabbits swarm in the hill-sides down toward the sea.”
“But you don’t shoot!”
“Not much, because I have no gun, only a pistol, and it don’t carry straight. I did nearly hit a rabbit, though, with it.”
“But can you get away shooting?”
“Can I? Should think I can. We have all sorts of fun down here. Can you fish?”
“I went once,” I said, “on the river.”
“But you didn’t catch anything,” said Mercer, grinning.