"Neither one nor the other. Don't you see, the old lady, in declining the linen-drapery, merges her own identity in that of her successor? There's no such firm as 'Hodgett' now, it's 'Spriggins,' and she thinks it necessary to sign accordingly. Here's the card enclosed."
"Well, there's one thing very certain, that Mrs Hodgett declines doing business with you in future, John."
"Yes; and I'm rather annoyed at it. I meant to have got Mogg to come down and see me at Oxford, and should have asked the Dean to meet him. I don't see how he could have refused; any way, I think I could have paid him in full for his late good offices. Well, I am not quite sure now, when I've taken my degree, that I sha'n't go and see the old lady again, and win her heart by paying a wedding-visit to the Spriggins's. I'll take you with me, if you like, Hawthorne, and introduce you as Lord some-body-or-other, an intimate friend of the dean's—or stay, Chesterton will make the best lord of the two. Look with what supreme disgust he is eyeing poor Mrs Nutt's best wine-glasses. Come now, I think that vine-leaf pattern is quite Horatian; and if you turn up your nose at that, Master Harry, you shall have your wine out of a tea-cup next time you come here. Draw the cork of that Moselle, and then I have something else to tell you. Do either of you men care about shooting, or can you shoot?"
"Why, I flatter myself I can," said Chesterton. "I'll bet you I'll hit two eggs right and left, nine tines out of ten, as often as you like to throw them up."
"I don't call that shooting; and you had better not let Mrs Nutt hear you talk of breaking eggs right and left in any such extravagant manner. But what I was going to say is this, that some friend of old Nutt's has some ground near here for which he has the deputation, and I have been offered a day's shooting there, for myself and any friend I like to bring. Now, I don't shoot—though I remember the days when I was a dead pot-shot at a blackbird; but if either of you are sportsmen, or fancy you are, which amounts to much the same thing, why, you can have a day at this place if you like, and I will go with you on condition you don't carry your guns cocked. Mind, I can't promise what sort of sport you will have, as it is too near Oxford not to be pretty well poached over; but you can try."
Shooting over a man's ground without leave (especially if in the face of a "notice" to the contrary) is decidedly the best sport, but unfortunately one of those stolen delights which only schoolboys and poachers can with any sort of conscience enjoy. Shooting with leave comes next, but is immeasurably inferior in point of piquancy. Shooting in one's own preserves at birds which have been reared and turned out, and cost you on the average about five guineas per brace, is decidedly the most fashionable, and consequently—the dullest. A day's shooting of any kind about Oxford, was a rare privilege, confined chiefly to those who were fortunate enough to be fellows of St ——, or to have an acquaintance among the surrounding squirearchy. True, that there were some enterprising spirits, who would gallop out some three or four miles to a corner of Lord A——'s preserves, give their horses in charge to a trusty follower, and after firing half a dozen shots, bag their two or three brace of pheasants, remount and dash off to Oxford, before the keepers, whom the sound of guns in their very sanctuary was sure to draw to the spot, could have any chance of coming up with them. But such exploits were deservedly rather reprobated than otherwise, even when judged by the under-graduate scale of morality; and even in the parties concerned, were the offspring rather of a Robin-Hood-like lawlessness than a genuine spirit of poaching.
We of course were delighted with the proposition which would have had quite sufficient attraction for us at any time; but coming in the dulness of vacation, it was an offer to be jumped at. "What game is there in this place?" said Chesterton. "Is there any cover shooting?"
"Oh, I can't tell you any thing about the place! It's about a mile off, but I never saw it. There's a good deal of ground to go over, I believe."
"What shall we do for dogs?"
"Mrs Nutt will lend you Boxer, I daresay; and Bruin is a capital hand at putting up water-rats."