owards Marcella's, which lay hidden among the folds of
her dress--quick resistance on her part, then acquiescence. He felt a
sudden pleasure in his friend's small triumph.

"Aldous and I have worn these things threadbare many a time," he said,
addressing his hostess. "You don't know how kind he is to my dreams. I
am no sportsman and have no landowning relations, so he ought to bid me
hold my tongue. But he lets me rave. To me the simple fact is that _game
preserving creates crime_. Agricultural life is naturally simpler--might
be, it always seems to me, so much more easily moralised and fraternised
than the industrial form. And you split it up and poison it all by the
emphasis laid on this class pleasure. It is a natural pleasure, you say.
Perhaps it is--the survival, perhaps, of some primitive instinct in our
northern blood--but, if so, why should it be impossible for the rich to
share it with the poor? I have little plans--dreams. I throw them out
sometimes to catch Aldous, but he hardly rises to them!"

"Oh! I _say_," broke in Frank Leven, who could really bear it no longer.
"Now look here, Miss Boyce,--what do you think Mr. Hallin wants? It is
just sheer lunacy--it really is--though I know I'm impertinent, and he's
a great man. But I do declare he wants Aldous to give up a big common
there is--oh! over beyond Girtstone, down in the plain--on Lord
Maxwell's estate, and make a _labourers'_ shoot of it! Now, I ask you!
And he vows he doesn't see why they shouldn't rear pheasants if they
choose to club and pay for it. Well, I will say that much for him,
Aldous didn't see his way to _that_, though he isn't the kind of
Conservative _I_ want to see in Parliament by a long way. Besides, it's
such stuff! They say sport brutalises _us_, and then they want to go and
contaminate the labourer. But we won't take the responsibility. We've
got our own vices, and we'll stick to them; we're used to them; but we
won't hand them on: we'd scorn the action."

The flushed young barbarian, driven to bay, was not to be resisted.
Marcella laughed heartily, and Hallin laid an affectionate hand on the
boy's shoulder, patting him as though he were a restive horse.

"Yes, I remember I was puzzled as to the details of Hallin's scheme,"
said Aldous, his mouth twitching. "I wanted to know who was to pay for
the licences; how game enough for the number of applicants was to be
got without preserving; and how men earning twelve or fourteen shillings