"Where do you think I have been, Daisy?"
"I don't know. Shooting! Have you?"
Daisy's eye caught the barrel of a fowling-piece showing its end up at the window. Preston, without replying, lifted up his game-bag, and let her see the bright feathers of little birds which partly filled it.
"You have! Shooting!" Daisy repeated, in a tone between disapprobation and dismay. "It isn't September!"
"Capital sport, Daisy," said Preston, letting the bag fall.
"I think it is very poor sport," said Daisy. "I wish they were all alive and flying again."
"So do I if I might shoot them again."
"It's cruel, Preston!"
"Nonsense, Daisy. Don't you be too tender. Birds were made to kill. What are they good for?"
With a wit that served her instead of experience, Daisy was silent, looking with unspoken abhorrence at the wicked muzzle of the fowling-piece.