“That’s what I said,” put in Edward, to cover the collapse of his brother’s argument.
Major Pirie frowned a little. “Partridges are another matter,” he said testily.
“Damned if I know what you’re driving at,” avowed Augustine. He paused with fork in air at his own words. “Drivin’ at,” he repeated painstakingly. “Drivin’ at pheasants, eh? Not bad, you know. Pass the mustard, Pirie.”
“God!” said the major, with gloom. “You know well enough what I mean. To work through fields miles off—that’s one thing. To shoot the covers here under the duke’s nose, with the beaters messin’ about—that’s quite another. However that’s your affair, not mine.”
“But don’t you see,” urged Augustine, “what difference does a day make? There’ll be just as much racket to-morrow as to-day. It isn’t reasonable, you know.”
“It was merely what you might call a sentiment,” said the major, in the half apologetic tone of a man admitting defeat. He looked the least sentimental of warriors as he went on with his breakfast—a longfaced, weather-beaten, dull-eyed man of the late forties.
Four other men who came in now at brief intervals, with few or no words of salutation to the company, and who lounged about helping themselves to what caught their fancy in the breakfast, were equally removed from the suspicion of adding a sentimental element to the atmosphere. They made little talk of any kind, and no mention whatever of that absurd qualm about the First which had been reported to have germinated among them.
Edward had reached the stage of filling his pipe. Walking to the mantel for a light, it occurred to him to ring the bell first. “Her ladyship breakfastin’ in her room?” he asked the youngster who answered the summons.
“Her ladyship’s woman has just gone up with it, sir,” he replied.
“That’s all right,” said Edward, and forthwith struck the match. “Send in Davis and Morton to me, and ask Barlow for those Brazilian cigars of mine—the small huntin’ ones. What wheels were those I heard on the gravel? If it’s the traps we shan’t want them to-day. We’re walkin’ across.”