He had read about her in a peerage at his sister's book-shop the previous day. Unfortunately it did not give her age, but that was not so important, after all. She was styled Honourable. She was the daughter of one Viscount and the sister of another. Her grandfather had been an Earl, and the book had shown her to possess a bewildering number of relationships among titled folks. All this was very interesting to him—and somewhat suggestive. Vague, shapeless hints at projects rose in his brain as he looked at her.
“I'm afraid you think my brother has odd notions of entertaining his guests,” she remarked to him, over her shoulder. The other ladies had not joined them.
“Oh, I'm all right,” he protested cordially. “I should hate to have him put himself out in the slightest.” Upon consideration he added: “I suppose he has given up the idea of shooting to-day.”
“I think not,” she answered.” The keeper was about this morning, that is—and he doesn't often come unless they are to go out with the guns. I suppose you are very fond of shooting.”
“Well—I've done some—in my time,” Thorpe replied, cautiously. It did not seem necessary to explain that he had yet to fire his first gun on English soil. “It's a good many years,” he went on, “since I had the time and opportunity to do much at it. I think the last shooting I did was alligators. You hit 'em in the eye, you know. But what kind of a hand I shall make of it with a shot-gun, I haven't the least idea. Is the shooting round I here pretty good?”
“I don't think it's anything remarkable. Plowden says my brother Balder kills all the birds off every season. Balder's by way of being a crack-shot, you know. There are some pheasants, though. We saw them flying when we were out this morning.”
Thorpe wondered if it would be possible to consult her upon the question of apparel. Clearly, he ought to make some difference in his garb, yet the mental vision of him-self in those old Mexican clothes revealed itself now as ridiculously impossible. He must have been out of his mind to have conceived anything so preposterous as rigging himself out, among these polished people, like a cow-puncher down on his luck.
“I wonder when your brother will expect to start,” he began, uneasily. “Perhaps I ought to go and get ready.”
“Ah, here comes his man,” remarked the sister. A round-faced, smooth-mannered youngster—whom Thorpe discovered to be wearing cord-breeches and leather leggings as he descended the stairs—advanced toward him and prefaced his message by the invariable salutation. “His Lordship will be down, sir, in ten minutes—and he hopes you'll be ready, sir,” the valet said.
“Send Pangbourn to this gentleman's room,” Miss Winnie bade him, and with a gesture of comprehensive submission he went away.