among the lady
archers, I felt out of my natural place, and glad she was under her
mother's wing, she looked so fair and innocent in her delicate blue and
white, and was free for such sweet ardour in our cause, all the
prettier and more arch because its demonstrations were kept down with
the strong hand of her mother.

Hippolyta and Philippa Horsman were in tightly-made short-skirted
dresses, pork-pie hats, and strong boots, all black picked out with
scarlet, like Hippo's own complexion. She was tall, with a good active
figure, and handsome, but she had reached the age when the colouring
loses its pure incarnadine and becomes hard and fixed, and she had a
certain likeness to all those creatures whose names are compounded of
tiger. But she was a good-natured being, and of late I had begun to
understand better her aspirations towards doing and becoming something
more than the mere domestic furniture kind of young lady.

Her aberrations against good taste and reticence were, I began to
understand, misdirected outbreaks of the desire to be up and doing.
Even now, as we ladies drew for our turn, she was saying, half sadly,
"I'm tired of it all. What good comes of getting this belt over and
over again? If it were rifle or pistol shooting it might be of use,
but one could hardly organise a regiment of volunteers with the long
bows when the invasion comes off."

Wit about the Amazonian regiment with the long bow was current all the
time we ladies were shooting, and Eustace was worrying me to such a
degree, that nervousness made me perform ten degrees worse than usual,
but that mattered little, for Hippolyta, with another of her cui bono
sighs, carried off the Roman mosaic that was the ladies' prize, telling
Pippa that it should be hers when the belt was won.

"Don't be too sure."

"Bosh! There's no one here who can handle a bow but Charlie Stympson.
One Alison is a spoon, and the other is a giant made to be conquered.
When he shot before, his arrows went right over the grounds, and stuck
into a jackdaw's nest on the church tower! I can't think why he came."

"To make a feather in your cap."

"What a substantial one!"

There I escaped to a seat by Lady Diana, where Viola could expend her
enthusiasm in clutches and squeezes of my hand. Eustace was by this
time wrought up to such a state that he hardly knew what he was doing,
and his first arrow wavered and went feebly aside. Two or three more
shot, and then the