ntly a blow to his professional
pride.

"Didn't any of that great pack come near you?" asked the Admiral
sympathetically.

"No--don't think so," said Dermott shortly.

I had counted eight birds flying straight over his butt myself, but I
said nothing. I was beginning to comprehend. _Et ego in Arcadia vixi_.

But the obtuse master-mariner persisted.

"How about that brace that flew right down the line? You must have seen
'em coming all the way. You didn't even try a shot at them, man!"

Dermott, who was fastening up his gaiter, answered rather listlessly--

"Sorry! It was--a misfire, I think."

"What?" cried the outraged Admiral. "A _misfire_? Both barrels--of both
guns?"

I did not hear the answer to this. I was looking at Dolly. Her face
could not be seen, for she was kneeling down a little distance away,
assiduously fondling the silky ears of a highly-gratified red setter.
And I realised then that some expressions are capable of a metaphorical
as well as a literal interpretation.

IV.

My wife and daughter returned home in the "machine" in time for dinner,
without Robin.

"His mother kept him," Kitty explained. She was favouring me with a
summary of her day's adventures, in the garden after dinner. "Such an
old dear, Adrian! And his father is a grand old man. Very solemn and
scriptural-looking and all that, but so courtly and simple when once he
gets over his shyness. (He tried to come in to tea in his shirt-sleeves,
but his wife hustled him out of the kitchen just in time.) Sir James
Fordyce was a shock, though. When we arrived he was chopping turnips in
a machine, dressed in clothes like any farm-labourer's. He said it was
fine to get back to his own people again. To look at him you would never
guess that he was one of the best known men in London, and a favourite
at Court, and _such_ an old dandy in Bond Street. The rest of the
household didn't seem to set any particular store by him. They took him
quite as a matter of course."

"What a pity English people can't do the same," I mused. "If they do
possess a distinguished relative they brag about him, and he usually
responds by avoiding them. If he does honour them with a visit, they try
to live up to him, and put on unnecessary frills, and summon all the
neighbourhood to come and inspect him."

"There's nothing of that kind about the Fordyces," said Kitty. "Sir
James was just one of themselves; he even spoke like them. It was, 'Aye,
Jeems!'