ODDS AND ENDS 277 
first day, on some rented ground. There were 
six guns and six loaders, keepers and _ beaters 
innumerable, a pack of retrievers, several game 
and lunch vans, and, of course, motors. I do not 
think more than about twenty-five partridges came 
in sight of the guns all day. Never did I get so 
tired of a day, which mercifully was abandoned 
before the usual time. The only part I enjoyed 
was the lunch, of which there were three grades— 
the guns’, the keepers’ and loaders’, and the beaters’. 
So excellent were the chicken, ham, and jelly-coated 
cutlets that I am ashamed to say I practically dis- 
pensed with bread. 
Valets supply the very essence of shooting blasé- 
ness, and some of them are remarkable for a 
wealth and facility of thunder and lightning speech. 
Phonograph records of some of the conversations 
between valets and keepers in the gun-room of a 
large country-house would be quite enough to 
make their employers’ hair stand on end. Keepers 
always are glad when a sportsman arrives in charge 
of a valet—if only for the fact that a valet prevents 
the escape of cartridge-bags. I have known the 
elusiveness of cartridge-bags to be the cause of 
no end of bother. It all falls on the shoulders 
of the keeper—why, I never could imagine. Often 
a keeper has not even heard of a man before, to 
say nothing of his cartridge-bag. A man once 
complained to me of the loss of his cartridge-bags, 
