“But why? There must be some very special reason.”
“There is. I, too, dined out and met at dinner a young man whose one desire in life appears to be to deprive living creatures of life.”
Sir Donald moved slightly.
“You’re not a sportsman, then, Mr. Carey?” he said.
“Indeed, I am. I’ve shot big game, the Lord forgive me, and found big pleasure in doing it. Yet this young man depressed me. He was so robust, so perfectly happy, so supremely self-satisfied, and, according to his own account, so enormously destructive, that he made me feel very sick. He is married. He married a widow who has an ear-trumpet and a big shooting in Scotland. If she could be induced to crawl in underwood, or stand on a cairn against a skyline, I’m sure he’d pot at her for the fun of the thing.”
“What is his name?” asked Sir Donald.
“I didn’t catch it. My host called him Leo. He has—”
“Ah! He is my only son.”
Pierce looked very uncomfortable, but Carey replied calmly:
“Really. I wonder he hasn’t shot you long ago.”