158 By Stream and Sea. 



grove, where, earlier in the season, the nightingales pitch 

 their orchestra amongst the May blossoms, we said nothing 

 about the dispute. But the argument was not renewed. 



Fieldfares, in the absence of better game, let me tell you, 

 are not to be despised by an amateur sportsman; and, 

 under the same conditions, they are not to be despised as 

 an article of food. Not that Mrs. G. V. is an amateur. 

 Very occasionally we, by favour, get a day amongst the 

 partridges, pheasants, and hares : rabbit shooting is a stand- 

 ing sport. The river gives us water-fowl by fits and starts, 

 and the water-courses harbour snipe. She can shoot them 

 all with a cleanly aim. 



The curate's wife, it should in justice to that estimable 

 lady be stated, shoots with a sweet little gun manufactured 

 on purpose for her from the design of her father, an old 

 country gentleman who taught his children — boys and girls 

 alike — to shoot and ride as soon as they could handle a gun 

 or sit in a saddle. With charming logic she therefore 

 throws the responsibility of impropriety, if any there be, 

 upon her father; always distributes the contents of her 

 game-bag amongst the poor; never takes anything except 

 on the wing, and never allows her rambles with gun and 

 friends to interfere with her domestic and parochial duties. 

 She is chagrined to find that her position, as the curate's 

 wife, entails upon her the necessity of great caution, and, to 

 some extent, deception. 



Sometimes she has to hide her gun under her Ulster coat, 

 and once a cow boy, attracted by the crack, crack, of her 

 tiny breechloader, leaped through the hedge and discovered 

 a strange tableau — parson's wife on the fringe of the turnips, 

 leaning upon the barrel of the smoking weapon, parson and 

 parson's friend returning triumphant with a brace of defunct 

 partridges that had been grandly dropped right and left. 



