"But Hopmann has taken no licence, either. As if any one would dare to ask you about that, for shooting round here! I should like to see them ask him even, when he is with me."
"For me it is to my conscience so,"--the German had a great gift of winking both eyes, through his spectacles, with rapid alternation; "I am not a subject of this realm. I make game of ze Game-laws."
However, I was not to be persuaded; and when the day came, there were guns enough without mine, and far too many, as it seemed to me, for a free beat and small enclosure. Luckily there was no covert-shooting yet; but one or two of the dogs had most narrow escapes, and I was obliged to interfere sometimes, and declare that I would walk them all back to kennel, unless the men tried to be more careful. One dog was my own, a very handsome lemon-and-white setter-bitch, who dropped to shot almost before you could see the smoke; and yet somebody put a shot through her ear, though I did not find it out till afterwards, or home she would have gone, whatever they might think at losing the best of the bunch, as one might say.
For there were six guns, sometimes close together,--a dangerous affair for a country like that, even when every man knows his neighbour, and each is an experienced and careful shot; most Cockneyfied too, for the look of the thing; and I had a great mind to keep away from them. But Stoneman would not hear of that; he had invited Lord Melladew, so he said, purely as a compliment to me, and how could I refuse to come with him? To this I could make no reply, being taken up with my own affairs to such a degree that I was not at home concerning other people's doings. The young Earl of Melladew was staying at the "Bell,"--which used to be called the "Cranleigh Arms," until we went down in the world,--and there he had his valet, and artistic outfit, and all his large ideas, in the long room with the magnificent view, where our tenant used to dry his onions. Now I am the very last to say a word against people who have gone up in life, by merits which have been denied to us. The first peer had proved himself a fine man of business, and made an exemplary fortune by lucrative Army-contracts during the Crimean war. If he compressed some dead cows in his hay, and compelled his old sheep-dogs to serve their time still by posthumous fidelity in the form of mutton,--as war correspondents on very short commons were ungrateful enough at that time to aver,--all those and greater errors he had redeemed by having a grandson as unlike him as possible.