"Oh no! please not. I should not like to have a wing at all," said Blanche, clasping her hands in a beseeching attitude.
"Why, pussy, what is the matter? Am I not to be forgiven for starting before you were up this morning? Never mind; we shall beg Miss Prosser for a holiday to-morrow, and you shall go to the moors, mounted on a little Shetlander."
"It is not that, papa. I'm afraid I shan't want to go to the moors any more now. I think it must be very dreadful. These poor killed birds! how can you stand and see them all die, papa?"
"Well, I can't say I should like to make a microscopic inspection of their dying moments. After the aim is taken and the shot fired, the fun is over."
"But, papa, how can you shoot those happy birds flying in the air, and not doing any harm?"
"Why, goosey, for the same reason as you knock down your nine-pins—for the sake of sport, to be sure," replied Mr. Clifford laughing at the distressed face of his little daughter.
"Come and shut up this little philosopher, Major," he continued, turning to one of his guests, a kindly-looking old gentleman, who had come sauntering up and joined them. "She is quite shocked at the monstrous cruelty we have been guilty of to-day. I begin to feel quite like the Roman Emperor you were telling me of the other day, Blanche; only flies were his special partiality, were they not?"
"Ah! depend upon it, Blanche has been having a course of Wordsworth," said the Major, as he shook hands. "Is it not he who says—
'Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow to the meanest thing that lives?'
But I shouldn't have thought you had arrived at the Wordsworthian stage yet—eh! Miss Blanchie?" said the kindly old gentleman, as he looked smilingly at the distressed little damsel.