Presently they started, Edward Cossey attended by his man with the second gun.
“Hullo! Cossey,” sang out the Squire after him, “it isn’t any use bringing your two guns for this sort of work. I don’t preserve much here, you know, at least not now. You will only get a dozen cock pheasants and a few brace of partridges.”
“Oh, thank you,” he answered, “I always like to have a second gun in case I should want it. It’s no trouble, you know.”
“All right,” said the Squire. “Ida and I will come down with the luncheon to the grove. Good-bye.”
After crossing the moat, Edward Cossey walked by himself, followed by his man and a very fine retriever, and the Colonel talked to George, who was informing him that Mr. Cossey was “a pretty shot, he wore, but rather snappy over it,” till they came to a field of white turnips.
“Now, gentlemen, if you please,” said George, “we will walk through these here turnips. I put two coveys of birds in here myself, and it’s rare good ‘lay’ for them; so I think that we had better see if they will let us come nigh them.”
Accordingly they started down the field, the Colonel on the right, George in the middle and Edward Cossey on the left.
Before they had gone ten yards, an old Frenchman got up in the front of one of the beaters and wheeled round past Edward, who cut him over in first-rate style.
From that one bird the Colonel could see that the man was a quick and clever shot. Presently, however, a leash of English birds rose rather awkwardly at about forty paces straight in front of Edward Cossey, and Harold noticed that he left them alone, never attempting to fire at them. In fact he was one of those shooters who never take a hard shot if they can avoid it, being always in terror lest they should miss it and so reduce their average.
Then George, who was a very fair shot of the “poking” order, fired both barrels and got a bird, and Edward Cossey got another. It was not till they were getting to the end of their last beat that Harold found a chance of letting off his gun. Suddenly, however, a brace of old birds sprang up out of the turnips in front of him at about thirty yards as swiftly as though they had been ejected from a mortar, and made off, one to the right and one to the left, both of them rising shots. He got the right-hand bird, and then turning killed the other also, when it was more than fifty yards away.