‘I would rather shoot at something alive. I expect I shall shoot at wild birds.’
‘He will too,’ said Nevill.
‘But suppose you hit one and hurt it?’
‘It wouldn’t know it was hurt; it would be dead,’ said Gavin. ‘Grown-up men shoot birds.’
‘And animals too,’ said Honor. ‘They shoot big game.’
‘What would you do with a dead bird?’ said Faith.
‘Cook it and eat it,’ said Gavin.
‘Or have a funeral,’ said Honor.
‘And say prayers,’ said Nevill, in a lower tone, with a movement of his hands towards each other.
‘But it might be hurt and not dead,’ said Faith.
‘Then I would shoot it again and make it dead,’ said Gavin.
‘Well, if you can depend on your aim like that!’
‘He doesn’t,’ said Honor, defending her brother from this charge. ‘If he shot a bird once, he could do it again.’
‘We might stuff a bird, to give to Father when he comes home,’ said Gavin.
‘How would you do that?’ said Faith, believing the process to involve objections.
‘Take out the inside and fill it up with something else. Fred knows about it. He is the gardener’s boy.’
‘Fred is a nice boy,’ said Nevill.
‘Wouldn’t a live bird be better than a stuffed one?’ said Faith, looking at Nevill with disagreement.
‘It wouldn’t be your own,’ said Honor. ‘It couldn’t belong to anyone. It wouldn’t be different from other birds.’
‘Father likes stuffed birds. There is one in his dressing-room,’ said Gavin.
‘A little, red bird,’ said Nevill. ‘He will shoot a robin for Father.’
‘“A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage,” ’
quoted Faith, with rising feeling.
‘Faith does have points in common with Heaven,’ said Hope.
‘Not a cage,’ said Nevill. ‘A nice, glass case.’
‘We needn’t kill a robin,’ said Honor. ‘Father kills other birds.’
‘All hang down,’ said Nevill. ‘Poor birds!’
‘Yes, that is what I mean,’ said Faith. ‘Poor birds!’
Nevill beat his hands together and uttered the sounds he made when chasing the fowls.
‘The bird couldn’t run, if it were stuffed and dead,’ said Gavin.
‘It sings,’ said Nevill. ‘Father’s bird sings in its case.’
‘I don’t think it can do that,’ said Faith.
‘Tweet, tweet,’ said Nevill, in disproof of this, assuming a listening air.
‘I don’t think they are very cruel to anything,’ said Eleanor.
‘Well, only to Faith,’ said Hope: ‘I think they are to her. It is three against one.’
‘I do not feel that at all,’ said Faith.
‘We only don’t think the same as she does,’ said Honor;
‘We can’t all think alike, can we?’ said Faith. ‘But I hope we shall agree about this some day.’
‘Some day he will shoot a little bird for you,’ promised Nevill, in vague amendment, as Faith bent to bid him good-bye.
Chapter 7
‘Have you all read Father’s letter?’ said Eleanor. ‘It is meant for us all. There is a note for me, that I have taken;
Regan put aside a note for herself, with a look of promise at her husband.
‘Here is a letter addressed to Isabel,’ said Eleanor, turning out the envelope. ‘I had better see if there is anything in it, before it goes upstairs.’
‘No, Mother,’ said Luce, putting out a restraining hand, ‘that is not the way to deal with letters. Let Isabel have it intact, as she would expect. That will teach her how to treat correspondence.’
‘Does she not know?’ said Daniel. ‘Has she never seen any letters?’
‘I daresay not addressed to herself,’ said Graham. ‘As she has no friends, she can only hear from her family. And they generally shares one’s life. In her case they always do.’
‘Your father may have put in something as an afterthought,’ said Eleanor, still handling the letter.
‘Then Isabel will tell you of it,’ said Daniel.
‘I don’t know that she will. She is a strange, independent child. And her father may not have thought to give a definite direction.’
‘He would put any message for you into your own letter,’ said Graham.
‘Not certainly. Things so often occur to him at the last. He may even have written this note on purpose to include something, and thought he would give Isabel pleasure at the same time.’
‘There is no ground for that assumption,’ said Sir Jesse, in an easy tone.
‘More than anyone would think, who did not know Fulbert.’
‘Would you say that, Mother?’ said Luce. ‘I think it is more like Father to have his own message for each of us. I can often tell to which one he is speaking, by his voice and words.’
‘But not by his notes,’ said Eleanor, smiling. ‘You have never watched him write them, if you think that.’
‘We generally communicate by word of mouth, as we share our home,’ said Daniel.
‘But he has to deal with people outside,’ said his mother. ‘His family is not the whole of his life. He has a good deal of correspondence.’
‘Then I suppose he addresses his letters to the people who are to read them. And this one is addressed to Isabel.’
‘A letter written by my own husband to my own child and enclosed in a letter to me, is not a secret from me,’ said Eleanor, tearing the envelope.
‘We see it is not,’ said Graham.
‘You talk as if we all lived in a state of estrangement.’
‘Two of us will now do so.’
‘No, my boy, Isabel will hardly notice that the envelope is broken.’
‘Father seems anyhow to have wasted an envelope,’ said Daniel.
‘A weak yielding to curiosity, Mother, that is unworthy of you,’ said Luce.
Eleanor looked surprised by the charge. She had felt no interest in Fulbert’s word to his daughter, and had given the true account of her motives.
‘You don’t keep the children apart in your mind, as Father does, Mother.’
‘They don’t need all that differentiation. I am tired of hearing about it.’
‘It is well that they should not need it,’ said Sir Jesse.
‘It teaches them to be touchy and exacting.’
‘You do not expect those qualities in Isabel,’ said Daniel. ‘I trust that your method will prove its success.’
‘There is nothing in the letter,’ said his mother, putting it down. ‘Isabel can have it when someone goes upstairs.’
‘Who will be the bearer of it?’ said Graham.
‘None of you need be. I will take it myself when I go to the schoolroom. For the matter of that, the girls will be passing in a minute.’
‘You might put it in a fresh envelope,’ said Graham.
‘I am not ashamed of anything I do,’ said Eleanor, raising her brows. ‘I should not dream of hiding it. I have opened Isabel’s letter, and she may know I have done so.’
‘I am sorry for that,’ said Daniel.
‘I never know why revealing baseness makes it better,’ said Graham.
‘People do not reveal such a thing,’ said Sir Jesse.
‘Isabel,’ said Eleanor, raising her voice, as footsteps sounded in the hall, ‘come in and say good morning to us. Are you all there?’
Isabel and Venice and Miss Mitford entered the room.
‘Good morning,’ said Miss Mitford, looking at Eleanor and using a tone of compliance with an injunction.
‘Good morning, Miss Mitford; good morning, my dears. I want to read you Father’s letter. Come and hear it.’
The two girls listened to the letter, put the normal questions and comments, and were about to go.
‘Here is a note put in for you, Isabel,’ said Eleanor, handing it to her daughter.