With something of an effort Kit pulled himself up. He was a small farmer's son and the Osborns were important people. He knew Osborn's family pride, which he thought his daughter had inherited. In Osborn, it was marked by arrogance; in the girl by a gracious, half-stately calm. For all that, the pride was there, and Kit, resolving that he would not be a fool, went to the post office and put Janet's letter in the box.
CHAPTER IV
THE PEAT CUTTERS
Osborn was dissatisfied and moody when, one afternoon, he stood, waiting for the grouse, behind a bank of turf on Malton moor. To begin with, he had played cards until the early morning with some of his guests and had been unlucky. Then he got up with a headache for which he held his wife accountable; Alice was getting horribly parsimonious, and had bothered him until he tried to cut down his wine merchant's bill by experimenting with cheaper liquor. His headache was the consequence. The whisky he had formerly kept never troubled him like that.
Moreover, it was perhaps a mistake to invite Jardine, although he sometimes gave one a useful hint about speculations on the Stock Exchange. The fellow went to bigger shoots and looked bored when Osborn's partridges were scarce and wild; besides, he had broken rules in order to get a shot when they walked the turnip fields in line. Osborn imagined Jardine would not have done so had he been a guest at one of the houses he boasted about visiting.
As they climbed Malton Head another of the party had broken Dowthwaite's drystone wall and the farmer had said more about the accident than the damage justified. In fact, Dowthwaite was rather aggressive, and now Osborn came to think of it, one or two others had recently grumbled about things they had hitherto borne without complaint.
In the meantime, Osborn and Thorn, who shared his butt, looked about while they waited for the beaters. The row of turf banks, regularly spaced, ran back to the Force Crags at the head of the dale. The red bloom of the ling was fading from the moor, which had begun to get brown. Sunshine and shadow swept across it, and the blue sky was dotted by flying, white-edged clouds. A keen wind swept the high tableland, and the grouse, flying before it, would come over the butts very fast.
In the distance, one could distinguish a row of figures that were presently lost in a hollow and got larger when they reappeared. They were beaters, driving the grouse, and by and by Osborn, picking up his glasses, saw clusters of small dark objects that skimmed and then dropped into the heath. It was satisfactory to note that they were numerous. Although the birds were rather wild, he could now give his friends some sport. After a time, however, the clusters of dark dots were seen first to scatter and then vanish. Osborn frowned as he gave Thorn the glasses.
"What does that mean? Looks as if the birds had broken back."
"Some have broken back," said Thorn. "If they've flown over the beaters, we have lost them for the afternoon." He paused and resumed: "I think the first lot are dropping. No; they're coming on."