_Constance._--"Is it a large place, the island?"
_Bartlett._--"About two acres, devoted exclusively to golden-rod and granite. The fact is, I was going to make a little study of golden-rod and granite, there. You shall visit the Fortunate Isle in my sketch, this afternoon, and see whether you'd like to go, really. People camp out there in the summer. Who knows, but if you keep on--gaining--this way, you may yet feel like camping out there yourself before you go away? You do begin to feel better, don't you? Everybody cries up this air."
_Constance._--"It's very pleasant; it seems fine and pure. Is the island a pretty place?"
_Bartlett_, glancing out at it over his shoulder:--"Well, you get the best of it from the parlour window, here. Not that it's so bad when you're on it; there's a surly, frugal, hard-headed kind of beauty about it,--like the local human nature--and it has its advantages. If you were camping out there, you could almost provision yourself from the fish and wild fowl of the surrounding waters,--supposing any of your party liked to fish or shoot. Does your father like shooting?"
_Constance._--"No, I don't believe he cares for it."
_Bartlett._--"I'm glad of that. I shall be spared the painful hospitality of pointing out the best places for ducks." At an inquiring look from Constance: "I'm glad for their sakes, not mine; _I_ don't want to kill them."
_Constance_, with grave mistrust:--"Not like shooting?"
_Bartlett._--"No, I think it's the sneakingest sort of assassination; it's the pleasure of murder without the guilt. If you must kill, you ought to be man enough to kill something that you'll suffer remorse for. Do you consider those atrocious sentiments, Miss Wyatt? I assure you that they're entirely my own."
_Constance_, blankly.--"I wasn't thinking--I was thinking--I supposed you liked shooting."
_Bartlett_, laughing uneasily.--"How did you get that impression?"
_Constance_, evasively.--"I thought all gentlemen did."
_Bartlett._--"They do in this region. It's the only thing that can comfort them in affliction. The other day our ostler's brother lost his sweetheart--she died, poor girl--and the ostler and another friend had him over here to cheer him up. They took him to the stable, and whittled round among the stalls with him half the forenoon, and let him rub down some of the horses; they stood him out among the vegetables and let him gather some of the new kind of potato-bugs; they made him sit in the office with his feet on top of the stove; they played billiards with him; but he showed no signs of resignation till they borrowed three squirrel-guns and started with him to the oak woods yonder. That seemed to 'fetch' him. You should have seen them trudging off together with their guns all aslant,--this way,--the stricken lover in the middle!" Bartlett rises to illustrate, and then at the deepening solemnity of Constance's face he desists in sudden dismay: "Miss Wyatt, I've shocked you!"