The remark cut across some rattling talk of Frank Leven's, who was in the first flush of the sportsman's ardour, and, though by no means without parts, could at the present moment apply his mind to little else than killing of one kind or another, unless it were to the chances of keeping his odious cousin out of Parliament.
Leven stared. Miss Boyce's speech seemed to him to have no sort of à propos. Aldous looked down upon her as he stood beside her, smiling.
"I wish you didn't trouble yourself so much about it," he said.
"How can I help it?" she answered quickly; and then flushed, like one who has drawn attention indiscreetly to their own personal situation.
"Trouble herself!" echoed young Leven. "Now, look here Miss Boyce, will you come for a walk with me? I'll convince you, as I convinced those fellows over there. I know I could, and you won't give me the chance; it's too bad."
"Oh, you!" she said, with a little shrug; "what do you know about it? One might as well consult a gambler about gambling when he is in the middle of his first rush of luck. I have ten times more right to an opinion than you have. I can keep my head cool, and notice a hundred things that you would never see. I come fresh into your country life, and the first thing that strikes me is that the whole machinery of law and order seems to exist for nothing in the world but to protect your pheasants! There are policemen—to catch poachers; there are magistrates—to try them. To judge from the newspapers, at least, they have nothing else to do. And if you follow your sporting instincts, you are a very fine fellow, and everybody admires you. But if a shoemaker's son in Mellor follows his, he is a villain and a thief, and the policeman and the magistrate make for him at once."
"But I don't steal his chickens!" cried the lad, choking with arguments and exasperation; "and why should he steal my pheasants? I paid for the eggs, I paid for the hens to sit on 'em, I paid for the coops to rear them in, I paid the men to watch them, I paid for the barley to feed them with: why is he to be allowed to take my property, and I am to be sent to jail if I take his?"
"Property!" said Marcella, scornfully. "You can't settle everything nowadays by that big word. We are coming to put the public good before property. If the nation should decide to curtail your 'right,' as you call it, in the general interest, it will do it, and you will be left to scream."
She had flung her arm round the back of her chair, and all her lithe young frame was tense with an eagerness, nay, an excitement, which drew Hallin's attention. It was more than was warranted by the conversation, he thought.
"Well, if you think the abolition of game preserving would be popular in the country, Miss Boyce, I'm certain you make a precious mistake," cried Leven. "Why, even you don't think it would be, do you, Mr. Hallin?" he said, appealing at random in his disgust.