ding it on a string,
and fighting it against other chestnuts: if you hit on a very tough
chestnut, and with it broke another one, it is, or used to be the rule
that your chestnut counted all the victories of the one it split in
addition to its own, of which a careful account was kept. So that if a
chestnut was a fiver, and it beat a tenner, it became at one leap a
fifteener. In something the same way Gould had an idea he might score
by Crawley, who was thought so much of for his proficiency in many
things. If he himself was so much richer, such a better rider and shot,
it ought to be assumed that if he took the trouble he could also beat
him at cricket, football, mathematics, German, and freehand drawing. It
was not very logical, and indeed he did not put the matter to himself so
nakedly as that, but that was the sort of idea which influenced him
nevertheless.

At the same time I fear that there may have been a little spite in his
feelings too; he had been a good deal snubbed by his sister Clarissa for
introducing a friend who had gone far to spoil her triumph in the play
she had got up with such pains and forethought, and he much regretted
having ever asked him. Gould's bragging would not have been much
believed, only Crawley confirmed it. "Yes," he said, "I went to stay
with Gould's people; very kind of them to ask me. They live in grand
style; I thought I had got to Windsor Castle by mistake at first. I
should have enjoyed it immensely if they had not made me act in private
theatricals, which I hate, and I am afraid I came to utter grief over
it. Took me out snipe-shooting; did you ever shoot at a snipe? bad bird
to hit; Gould got some. I suppose one would pick up the knack of it in
time. And, yes, we went out with the harriers; I had never sat a horse
when he jumped anything before, and I came a couple of croppers. But it
was great fun, and I did not hurt myself. Gould did not get a fall, oh
no; he is used to it."

A good many were rather disgusted with Gould when he talked in the way
he did, and Buller let him see it. "It's awfully bad form to ask a
fellow to your house, and then boast that he can't do things that he
never tried before, so well as you can," he blurted out.

"Oh, of course, we and know that Crawley is perfect in _your_ eyes,"
sneered Gould.

"That's rot," said Buller elegantly; "but I do know this, that you might
have practised anything you know, shooting, riding, anything, all you