ll.
Do you like shooting?"

"I never did shoot anything."

"Well, perhaps better not. To tell the truth, I'm not very fond of
young men who take to shooting without having anything to shoot at.
By-the-by, now I think of it, I'll send your mother some game." It
may, however, here be fair to mention that game very often came
from Guestwick Manor to Mrs Eames. "And look here, cold pheasant
for breakfast is the best thing I know of. Pheasants at dinner are
rubbish,--mere rubbish. Here we are at the house. Will you come in
and have a glass of wine?"

But this John Eames declined, pleasing the earl better by doing
so than he would have done by accepting it. Not that the lord was
inhospitable or insincere in his offer, but he preferred that such a
one as John Eames should receive his proffered familiarity without
too much immediate assurance. He felt that Eames was a little in awe
of his companion's rank, and he liked him the better for it. He liked
him the better for it, and was a man apt to remember his likings. "If
you won't come in, Good-bye," and he gave Johnny his hand.

"Good-evening, my lord," said Johnny.

"And remember this; it is the deuce of a thing to have rheumatism in
your loins. I wouldn't go to sleep under a tree, if I were you,--not
in October. But you're always welcome to go anywhere about the
place."

"Thank you, my lord."

"And if you should take to shooting,--but I dare say you won't; and
if you come to trouble, and want advice, or that sort of thing, write
to me. I knew your father well." And so they parted, Eames returning
on his road towards Guestwick.

For some reason, which he could not define, he felt better after his
interview with the earl. There had been something about the fat,
good-natured, sensible old man, which had cheered him, in spite of
his sorrow. "Pheasants for dinner are rubbish,--mere rubbish," he
said to himself, over and over again, as he went along the road;
and they were the first words which he spoke to his mother, after
entering the house.

"I wish we had some of that sort of rubbish," said she.

"So you will, to-morrow"; and then he described to her his interview.

"The earl was, at any rate, quite right about lying upon the ground.
I wonder you can be so foolish. And he is right about your poor
father too. But you have got to change your boots; and we shall be
ready for dinner almost immediately."

But Johnny Eames, before he sat down to dinner, did write his