172 THE GROUSE 



not too much iced, and quite the brightest 

 pair of eyes next them at dinner that 

 evening, to dispel the gloom and restore 

 them to their native good humour. 



A day such as I have attempted to 

 describe — an experience which must be 

 familiar to many — must be written down 

 as a failure, and an inexcusable failure. 



For it is not to every one that the 

 good things of this world are given, and 

 surely the fortunate possessors of wide 

 stretches of moorland, with sufficient 

 means to keep the shooting in their 

 own hands, should not grudge the pains 

 necessary to turn their ground to good 

 account. A little trouble, spread over a 

 few years, would have been enough to 

 make this day of forty brace, which no one 

 enjoyed, into a day of nearer two hundred 

 brace, which would have been a real 

 pleasure to every one who bore their share 

 in it, from the gun who killed his thirty 

 birds at one drive from a cleverly placed 

 butt, to the lad with the pony who felt a 

 pardonable pride in having contributed to 



