"Why, if you wish to shoot you shall," he said with smiling earnestness. "I should be glad to show you how. It's quite easy to learn. There's nothing difficult or objectionable in it."
"Oh, do you really mean it? Do you think it quite——proper? I never could see any real impropriety, and somehow I have fancied that I have a genuine passion for it. Perhaps I shall not like it after I have tried it—but, yes I shall, I know I shall. Don't you think so?"
She had a way of opening her eyes wide, as a child does, when asking a question, and she looked straight into his with a simple fearlessness that was far removed from boldness.
"I think you would like any thing that—that—you ought to like," he said.
"I do not like that," she replied naïvely; "it has the ring of flattery. Why do men always do that? Do they think we like it?"
"I don't think you do," he responded, laughing and opening his eyes a little wider in turn. "I really didn't mean flattery, however: I meant to say that you are constituted to enjoy real, rational pastimes and recreations, that you have healthy, natural tastes. That is not flattery, I hope."
"You put it in the least objectionable shape, to say the least," she replied, "and I am willing to compromise, remembering your promise about the gun. I have an ambition that I will confide to you." She leaned toward him a little and added: "When I go to Newport next summer I want to be able to tell my friends about shooting quails in Alabama. It will be so much better than their poor mockery of fox-chasing—that's absurd."
"Ah, I begin to understand," said Reynolds. "You may count on me to aid you in every possible way. You shall have most interesting and realistic experiences to relate at the seaside, if you will let me be your guide and teacher. I beg to be your abettor-in-chief."
Mrs. Noble and Moreton approached, just at this point, and the subject was dropped. In fact Moreton at once drew Miss Cordelia away to some other part of the house, and managed to be near her for the rest of the evening. But the girl left with Reynolds something that lingered, diffusing itself throughout his consciousness, with the effect of a mildly exhilarating potion. Strangely enough, the words of Moreton's little song:
"The light of her eyes
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And the bee never sips,"