"No, I'd rather rest. The party is scattered in every direction; it will be some time before all are in. What a wide view from here—could you see us shooting?"
"Yes, that is Miss Crabb and Miss Noble could—but really I did not look. It frightens me to see a gun fired. It is a silly weakness that I can't overcome."
He had thrown aside upon the ground his old-fashioned game-bag stuffed with the dead birds, and laid his gun across it. He sat down a little way from her, in a half-reclining position, resting the weight of his heavy shoulders on one elbow.
"I never before saw quails so numerous, I believe," he said, twirling the spray of mistletoe and looking at his favorite dog which had crouched panting before him. "We have had a fine morning's shoot."
"I am very glad. My uncle would have been so disappointed if you had failed to find birds," she responded, her voice, so sweet, so peculiarly artless and tender.
"He is a fervent sportsman," she continued, "and sets great store by his annual shooting party. Last year the rain interfered and he was terribly put out about it."
"He certainly knows how to manage an affair like this," Reynolds said. "I never saw any thing so perfectly planned and executed. We found the birds at once and have been shooting ever since. Nothing could have been better."
He carelessly took up her hat, which lay within easy reach of him, and thrust the stem of the mistletoe spray behind the broad band of ribbon that encircled the crown. It was a cold looking cluster.
"Not a bad bit of decoration, is it?" he smilingly inquired. "It is the most peculiar and beautiful sprig of mistletoe I ever saw. See how the smaller stems have grown around each other in fanciful twists."
She made a quick, suddenly-arrested movement, as if to snatch away the frigid-looking winter cluster, then glancing up into his face, simply said: