I
can't explain why without going into a long and complicated story."
"Oh, certainly, certainly," said Amblecope hastily; long and complicated
stories that were not told by himself were abominable in his eyes. He
turned the pages of _Country Life_ and became spuriously interested in
the picture of a Mongolian pheasant.
"Not a bad representation of the Mongolian variety," he exclaimed,
holding it up for his neighbour's inspection. "They do very well in some
covers. Take some stopping too, once they're fairly on the wing. I
suppose the biggest bag I ever made in two successive days--"
"My aunt, who owns the greater part of Lincolnshire," broke in
Treddleford, with dramatic abruptness, "possesses perhaps the most
remarkable record in the way of a pheasant bag that has ever been
achieved. She is seventy-five and can't hit a thing, but she always goes
out with the guns. When I say she can't hit a thing, I don't mean to say
that she doesn't occasionally endanger the lives of her fellow-guns,
because that wouldn't be true. In fact, the chief Government Whip won't
allow Ministerial M.P.'s to go out with her; 'We don't want to incur by-
elections needlessly,' he quite reasonably observed. Well, the other day
she winged a pheasant, and brought it to earth with a feather or two
knocked out of it; it was a runner, and my aunt saw herself in danger of
being done out of about the only bird she'd hit during the present reign.
Of course she wasn't going to stand that; she followed it through bracken
and brushwood, and when it took to the open country and started across a
ploughed field she jumped on to the shooting pony and went after it.
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