Throckmorton laughed aloud.
“Why should he be afraid of me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Everybody is afraid of one’s father,” replied Jacqueline, candidly.
“Jack and I entertain sentiments of mutual respect,” laughed Throckmorton again. “The only fault I find with him is that he is unduly filial sometimes. For example, when I am enjoying the society of a charming young lady he thinks too young for me, he behaves as if I were his great-grandfather instead of his father. Jack has a good deal of Satan in him.”
Jacqueline did not always follow Throckmorton’s remarks, but she noticed he had a rich voice, and he was the straightest, most soldierly-looking man she ever saw in her life. Throckmorton slung his game-bag around and held it open.
“Do you like robins?” he said. “They are delicious broiled on toast”—and he took out a bird by the legs and showed it to her.
Jacqueline stood perfectly still. Her eyes dilated and her breath came quickly. She took the bird out of his hand. It had long stopped bleeding, and its little cold head, with half-closed eyes, fell over piteously. Jacqueline took out her handkerchief and wrapped the poor robin in it.
“Oh, the poor bird!” she said, and suddenly two large tears ran down her cheeks.
Throckmorton stood surprised, touched, delighted, and almost ashamed. He had been a sportsman all his life, and could see no harm in knocking over a few birds in the season; but the picture of this tender-hearted child, that could not see a dead bird without weeping, struck him as beautifully feminine. But what could he say? If he was a bloodthirsty brute to shoot a robin, what must all the slaughter of birds he had been guilty of in his lifetime make him? He could only say, half shamefacedly and half laughing “My dear little friend, you wouldn’t have men as squeamish as women, would you?”
But to this Jacqueline only responded by pressing the poor bird’s cold breast to her cheek.