"Carleton!" exclaimed young Rossitur. "Can you be so absurd! Lose this splendid day for the woodcock, when we may not have another while we are here!"
"You are not a true sportsman, Mr. Rossitur," said the other, coolly, "or you would know what it is to have some sympathy with the sports of others. But you will have the day for the woodcock, and bring us home a great many, I hope. Miss Fleda, suppose we give this impatient young gentleman his orders and despatch him."
"I thought you were more of a sportsman," said the vexed West
Pointer, "or your sympathy would be with me."
"I tell you the sporting mania was never stronger on me," said the other, carelessly. "Something less than a rifle, however, will do to bring down the game I am after. We will rendezvous at the little village over yonder, unless I go home before you, which I think is more probable. Au revoir!"
With careless gracefulness he saluted his disconcerted companion, who moved off with ungraceful displeasure. Fleda and Mr. Carleton then began to follow back the road they had come, in the highest good humour both. Her sparkling face told him with even greater emphasis than her words,
"I am so much obliged to you, Sir."
"How you go over fences!" said he, "like a sprite, as you are."
"Oh, I have climbed a great many," said Fleda, accepting, however, again with that infallible instinct, the help which she did not need. "I shall be so glad to get some nuts, for I thought I wasn't going to have any this year; and it is so pleasant to have them to crack in the long winter evenings."
"You must find them long evenings indeed, I should think."
"Oh no, we don't," said Fleda. "I didn't mean they were long in that way. Grandpa cracks the nuts, and I pick them out, and he tells me stories; and then you know he likes to go to bed early. The evenings never seem long."