io8 CONVERSATIONAL HINTS 



myself I held as straight as the straightest that 

 day, and was quite modest about it. Dick, who is 

 one of the glories of the Gun Club, didn't come off. 

 He was much annoyed because I wiped his eye 

 three times running at what he called ' impossible 

 birds.' He said it all came from sleeping on a 

 feather-bed, but I had slept on a feather-bed too, 

 so it couldn't have been that. But why, oh, why, 

 are rabbits so hard to shoot ? They are small, of 

 course, but so is a partridge; and they go very 

 fast, but so does everything else except a land-rail, 

 and I've seen a slow old land-rail flap the gauntlet 

 of three Al shots without losing so much as a tail- 

 feather. ' By gad,' they explained, ' that was a 

 rum 'un, but you can't expect to hit a thing that 

 goes a yard an hour when you've been shooting at 

 flashes of lightning all day.' 



Of all created things rabbits in covert are the 

 most perverse and elusive. They don't want to be 

 shot. Perhaps that's natural ; but then they're no 

 sportsmen, for they don't give you the ghost of a 

 chance of making ghosts of them. Yet Loder, 

 my friend Loder, doesn't seem to feel this. He 

 sees a flash of white fur in the thicket, and, while 

 I'm wondering whether I ought to fire, bang ! 



