CHAPTER XXI.

EFFIE MAKES MISCHIEF.

'Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.' So say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless; let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us.--Elia.

'I THINK it's cowardly, too,' said Norah, who held some strong opinions, and expressed them strongly on provocation. The provocation in the present instance came from Carrie, who was ridiculing Norah's objection to coursing-the amusement proposed for the day by Mr. Summers. It was Monday morning, breakfast was over, and Mr. Summers, standing upon the hearthrug, had some time before suggested that not only Miles and his son, but his daughters' and Norah, should spend a pleasant morning in watching a hare hunted to death in the neighbourhood. Carrie was in high delight at the

prospect, because she liked to see not only the hunt, but the hunters; perhaps Mr. Chillingham among the rest. She described' with great spirit to Norah the last hunt she had attended, in which, she said, the hare was run to a jelly.' Whereupon Norah mildly remarked that she thought it very cruel.'

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"Then of course you won't come to-day,' said Carrie sarcastically, thinking Norah's comment cant, and never imagining for a moment that she could decline such a treat.

'No, thank you.'

'Do you really mean to stay at home?' incredulously.

'Yes; if you don't mind.'

'What a ridiculous notion!' cried Carrie derisively.

'But it is cruel,' repeated Norah, nettled a little by Carrie's offensive tone, and I think it's cowardly too.'

'Papa, Miss Wyndham says we are all cowards,' exclaimed Carrie, determined to over

whelm Norah by calling up this tremendous reinforcement. Mr. Summers simply gazed confounded at Norah, who, reddening to the roots of her hair quite as much with vexation as with confusion, said hesitatively :

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I only said that I thought hunting a hare cowardly.'

'Cowardly!' gasped Mr. Summers.

'I mean that it's so weak and timid and defenceless,' pleaded Norah.

'I presume you know, Miss Wyndham, that some of the best people in England hunt, from the Prince of Wales down, and they're not exactly the milksops and cowards of the country.' Mr. Summers was so much affronted by the audacious charge brought against him personally (for of course he thought only of himself), that he spoke with exceeding stiffness and severity even. Wherefore Miles, though of the opposite camp, deserted at once to Norah.

Well, it depends on what you mean by

cowardly," he said. It isn't cowardly in the sense that a milksop is cowardly-without nerve or courage but it is cowardly in the sense that a bully is cowardly. You call a man a coward who beats a woman, because she can't resist him; and in this sense there's certainly something cowardly in a crowd of men and dogs running a wretched hare "into jelly," as Miss Carrie describes it.'

Miles, having overheard this expression, was not sorry to administer the rebuke in retaliation for Carrie's attempt to make mischief.

The class of people who hunt and course are not exactly the class of people, I take it, who beat their wives. I have yet to learn that the English aristocracy are cowardly in any sense,' retorted Mr. Summers, with an access of pomposity. He was as much amazed as annoyed by being opposed and even lectured.

'A man may do a cowardly thing without being a coward, just as he may do a cruel

thing without being cruel-from thoughtless

ness:

Evil is wrought by want of thought

As well as want of heart;

or, as Tennyson puts it:

Cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows

To pity. More from ignorance than will.

But indeed,' added Miles, rather ashamed of the didactic vein into which he had drifted, 'I ought to be the last person, as Norah will tell you, to preach to others on the subject. I have killed as many harmless, dumb, defenceless creatures in my days as most men.'

'Do I understand that you object to join us?' asked Mr. Summers frigidly. He was so unaccustomed to opposition as to take it for impertinence. Miles was not the man to forget the complaisance of a guest because of a host's discourtesy. Besides, to tell the truth, his heart was in the sport, say what he would, and he felt free to enjoy it, since Norah would need no