“No; I mean it.”
“Well, just a little. Let’s see, I’m seventeen nearly, and I was only six when my father made me fire off a gun first. I’ve got a little one in the gun-room that I used to use.”
“And were you very young when you began to learn to fish?”
“I caught a little salmon when I was eight. Father said the fish nearly drowned me instead of me drowning the salmon. But I caught him all the same.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, I tumbled in, I suppose, and rolled over in the stream. Shon pulled me out.”
“Did he?”
“Yes; Scood’s father. He’s one of our gillies. Lives down there.”
“By that pig-sty?”
“Pig-sty? That isn’t a pig-sty. That’s a bothy.”