So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.
“These little brown snipe you call woodcock,” he began; “we bagged nine brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers—”
“Rotten,” said Mortimer thickly; “Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps, and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs—”
“Where do you expect to find native woodcock?” demanded Ferrall, laughing.
“On the table hereafter,” growled Mortimer.
“Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants,” retorted Ferrall amiably; “Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking.”
“Not I,” said Voucher; “the sport is capital—if one can manage to hit the beggars—”
“Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting,” observed Ferrall; “that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack! and,” turning to Alderdene, “it's like taking money from you, Blinky—which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before dressing.”
His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a servant.
“This salt air keeps one thirsty,” he observed to Ferrall; then something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips. He had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.