The Earl preserved his countenance. “I perceive it. What do you find to do in the spring and the summer-time, Martin?”
“Oh, well! Of course, there is nothing much to do,” acknowledged Martin. “But one can always get a rabbit, or a brace of wood-pigeon!”
“If you can get a wood-pigeon, you are a good shot,” observed Gervase.
This remark could scarcely have failed to please. “Well, I can, and it is true, isn’t it, that a wood-pigeon is a testing shot?” said Martin. “My father would always pooh-pooh it, but Glossop says — you remember Glossop, the head-keeper? — that your pigeon will afford you as good sport as any game-bird of them all!”
The Earl agreed to it; and Martin continued to talk very happily of all his sporting experiences, until an unlucky remark of Theo’s put him in mind of his grievances, when he relapsed into a fit of monosyllabic sulks, which lasted for the rest of the meal.
“Really, Theo, that was not adroit!” said the Earl, afterwards.
“No: bacon-brained!” owned Theo ruefully. “But if we are to guard our tongues every minute of every day — I”
“Nonsense! The boy is merely spoilt. Is that my stepmother’s voice? I shall go down to the stables!”
Here he was received with much respect and curiosity, nearly every groom and stableboy finding an occasion to come into the yard, and to steal a look at him, where he stood chatting to the old coachman. On the whole, he was approved. He was plainly not a neck-or-nothing young blood of the Fancy, like his half-brother; he was a quiet gentleman, like his cousin, who was a very good rider to hounds; and if the team of lengthy, short-legged bits of blood-and-bone he had brought to Stanyon had been of his own choosing, he knew one end of a horse from another. He might take a rattling toss or two at the bullfinches of Ashby Pastures, but it seemed likely that he would turn out in prime style, and possible that he would prove himself to be a true cut of Leicestershire.
He found his head-groom, Sam Chard, late of the 7th Hussars, brushing the dried mud from the legs of his horse, Cloud. Chard straightened himself, and grinned at him, sketching a salute. “‘Morning, me lord!”