Chapter Seven.
Treating of an Air-Gun and a Door-Key.
Saurin met with a disappointment when he returned home. His uncle had intended to go abroad and take him with him, but this intention was frustrated by an attack of gout, which kept him to his country home, where his nephew had to spend the entire vacation, and he found it the reverse of lively. Sir Richard Saurin’s house stood in the midst of a well-timbered park, and there were some spinneys belonging to the place also. At one time he had rented the shooting all round about, and preserved his own woods; but it was a hunting country, and the havoc made by foxes was found to be so great that he gave up preserving in disgust, and so, growing lazy, made that an excuse for dropping the other field shooting, which passed into different hands. So now there was no partridge-shooting, unless a stray covey chose to light in the park, and there were very few pheasants, though the rabbits were pretty numerous.
Sir Richard, being free from any paroxysm of his complaint when his nephew arrived, laughed at his black eye.
“Is that the result of your course of lessons in boxing?” he asked.
“Well, Uncle Richard, I should have come worse off if I had not had them,” replied Saurin; “but one cannot fight without taking as well as giving.”
“But why fight at all? That is not what you are sent to school for.”
“I never did before, and it is not likely to happen again, only I was forced on this occasion to stand up for myself.”
“Well, well,” said Sir Richard, “I have something more serious to speak to you about.”
Saurin felt his heart beat; he feared for a moment that his visits to Slam’s, and the impositions he had practised, had been discovered; but this was not the case.