She gave him a condescending glance; and Scott laughed.
"She and Miller save this establishment from daily famine," he said. "You have no idea how many deer and boar it takes to keep the game within limits and ourselves and domestics decently fed. Just look at the heads up there on the walls." He waved his arm around the oak wainscoting, where, at intervals, the great furry heads of wild boar loomed in the candlelight, ears and mane on end, eyes and white sabre-like tusks gleaming. "Those are Geraldine's," he said with brotherly pride.
"I want to shoot one, too!" said Duane firmly. "Do you think I'm going to let my affianced put it all over me like that?"
"Isn't it like a man?" said Geraldine, appealing to Kathleen. "They simply can't endure it if a girl ventures competition——"
"You talk like a suffragette," observed her brother. "Duane doesn't care how many piglings you shoot; he wants to go out alone and get that old grandfather of all boars, the one which kept you on the mountain for the last three days——"
"My boar!" she cried indignantly. "I won't have it! I won't let him. Oh, Duane, am I a pig to want to manage this affair when I've been after him all winter?—and he's the biggest, grayest, wiliest thing you ever saw—a perfectly enormous silvery fellow with two pairs of Japanese sabre-sheaths for tusks and a mane like a lion, and a double bend in his nose and——"
Shouts of laughter checked her flushed animation.
"Of course I'm not going to sneak out all alone and pot your old pig," said Duane; "I'll find one for myself on some other mountain——"
"But I want you to shoot with me!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I wanted you to see me stalk this boar and mark him down, and have you kill him. Oh, Duane, that was the fun. I've been saving him, I really have. Miller knows that I had a shot once—a pretty good one—and wouldn't take it. I killed a four-year near Hurryon instead, just to save that one——"
"You're the finest little sport in the land!" said Duane, "and we are just tormenting you. Of course I'll go with you, but I'm blessed if I pull trigger on that gentleman pig——"