Ralph Henry Barbour

“ I turned in desperation to my left-hand neighbor, the canon's wife. She was talking rapidly in a rasping falsetto to a young barrister, who—but I have forgotten just what he had done; it was important, however, and made him a man of prominence. I went back to my soup, and wished that English country houses were steam-heated; I detest shivers around my spine.
Presently I heard Lady Cicely's mellow voice. I roused myself, and looked up quickly to reply. Alas! her head was turned from me, and I saw only a piled-up mass of burnished hair that was like red bronze in the light from the candelabra. ”

“ I am counting the host, Sir Roger—an unusual procedure, since no one, not even his wife, ever does count him in anything.
"Oh, pray don't mind Chuckles," she will protest. "Leave him to his guns; he'd much rather you would, you know." ”

“ So Sir Roger is usually left with his guns, a fact that pleases him vastly. Sir Roger collects guns; he has rooms full of them, each in its mahogany case glinting dully along the length of its polished barrel. Tradition says that Sir Roger has never used one in all his fifty years; and I have been assured that he could not bring down a pheasant at two yards. He possesses firearms of every description, preferring, however, the accumulation of rifles and shotguns. ”