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 co