"So you've all come to meet us," he said, looking at his wife, and from his wife to Angus Hamleigh, with a keen, quick glance, too swift to be remarkable. "Uncommonly good of you. We are going to have a grand year for woodcock, I believe—like the season of 1855, when a farmer at St. Buryan shot fifty-four in one week."
"Poor dear little birds!" sighed Mopsy; "I feel so sorry for them."
"But that doesn't prevent your eating them, with breadcrumbs and gravy," said Leonard, laughing.
"When they are once roasted, it can make no difference who eats them," replied Mopsy; "but I am intensely sorry for them all the same."
They all went home together, a cheery procession, with the dogs at their heels. Mr. Hamleigh's efforts to escape from the two damsels who had marked him for their own, were futile: nothing less than sheer brutality would have set him free. They trudged along gaily, one on each side of him; they flattered him, they made much of him—a man must have been stony-hearted to remain untouched by such attentions. Angus was marble, but he could not be uncivil. It was his nature to be gentle to women. Mop and Dop were the kind of girls he most detested—indeed, it seemed to him that no other form of girlhood could be so detestable. They had all the pertness of Bohemia without any of its wit—they had all the audacity of the demi-monde, with far inferior attractions. Everything about them was spurious and second-hand—every air and look and tone was put on, like a ribbon or a flower, to attract attention. And could it be that one of these meretricious creatures was angling for him—for him, the Lauzun, the d'Eckmühl, the Prince de Belgioso, of his day—the born dandy, with whom fastidiousness was a sixth sense? Intolerable as the idea of being so pursued was to him, Angus Hamleigh could not bring himself to be rude to a woman.
It happened, therefore, that from the beginning to the end of that long ramble, he was never in Mrs. Tregonell's society. She and Jessie walked steadily ahead with their dogs, while the sportsmen tramped slowly behind Mr. Hamleigh and the two girls.
"Our friend seems to be very much taken by your sisters," said Leonard to Captain Vandeleur.
"My sisters are deuced taking girls," answered Jack, puffing at his seventeenth cigarette; "though I suppose it isn't my business to say so. There's nothing of the professional beauty about either of 'em."
"Distinctly not!" said Leonard.
"But they've plenty of chic—plenty of go—savoir faire—and all that kind of thing, don't you know. They're the most companionable girls I ever met with!"