FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS 75 



moved, he knew the family histories, the cousin- 

 ships, the scandals, the heroic misadventures, the 

 secret sorrows of all the greatest families. If you 

 happened to mention Bunberry as one of your 

 friends, he would immediately break in upon you with 

 the information that poor Tom Bunberry did a bad 

 day's work when he quarrelled with Sir John Plum- 

 Bunberry, his great uncle, who had in consequence 

 cut him out of his will, and left the whole of his 

 enormous fortune to the young and improvident 

 Lord Eatafie, his wife's second cousin three times 

 removed. Stories would follow dealing with Lord 

 Batafie's scandalous conduct with Miss Alma 

 Beauseant, the latest skirt- dancer, and the grief 

 this had caused to his saintly mother, whose 

 Evangelical principles have made her respected in 

 all the most blameless missionary and Sunday 

 School circles. Chif stands five feet four in his 

 shooting boots, his brilliant stockings are doubly 

 turned over a pair of hypothetical calves, and his 

 ties and waistcoats are a dream. To see this little 

 creature dangling after a dowager, like a torn-tit in 

 attendance on an Aylesbury duck, is a liberal edu- 

 cation in the art of winning the consideration of 

 middle-aged feminine stoutness. When he shoots 



