"Can you shoot?" Vic asked one morning, very timidly, hardly raising her eyes.
"Rather!" Will exclaimed. "I wish I'd brought my gun along."
"I have a rifle," Vic said, and ran into the house and brought the rifle and a box of cartridges.
Will measured off thirty paces, and stood a big cocoanut on top of a stump.
Vic handled the rifle as if she were afraid of it, and took the first shot. The cocoanut did not stir. Then Will fired without hitting. After three or four rounds Will's bullet grazed the side of the nut, and he was duly elated.
"You'll be all right with more practice," he told her. "I've practised a great deal in shooting-galleries."
"I think the mark is too low for me," she answered, with becoming humility. "Pin a bit of paper to that tree beside the stump, about as high as your head."
Will pinned up a scrap of paper half the size of his hand, and they fired several rounds without touching it. Then Vic started toward the house with the rifle.
"Not going to give it up, are you?" he called. But her only answer was "Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five"—she was pacing. When she reached "one hundred," she stopped and turned—one hundred paces from the tiny mark.
"You stand there by the tree," she called, "and see whether I can hit the old thing from here."