“What parcel, dear?”
“That long parcel on that table.”
“It is a gun-case which I have not yet unpacked. Now run away.”
“But that reminds me. You said I might go out some day to shoot with you.”
“On some future day. I do not much care for girls using firearms; and you are so busy now with your school.”
“You think, perhaps, that I cannot fire a gun, but I can aim well; I can kill a bird on the wing as neatly as any one. I told Audrey, and she would not believe me. Please—please show me your new gun.
“Not now; I have not looked at it myself yet.”
“But you do believe that I can shoot?”
“Oh yes, dear—yes, I suppose so. All the same, I should be sorry to trust you; I do not approve of women carrying firearms. Now leave me, Evelyn; I have a good deal to attend to.”
Evelyn went to bed to think over her uncle’s words; her disgrace at school; the terrible dénouement which lay before her; the money, which seemed to her to be the only way out, and which would insure her comfort with Jasper wherever Jasper might like to take her; and finally, and by no means least, she meditated over the subject of her uncle’s new gun. On the ranch she had often carried a gun of her own; from her earliest days she had been accustomed to regard the women of her family as first-class shots. Her mother had herself taught her how to aim, how to fire, how to make allowance in order to bring her bird down on the wing, and Evelyn had followed out her instructions many times. She felt now that her uncle did not believe her, and the fear that this was the case irritated her beyond words.