"
Rupert spoke quietly and evenly, but for a moment or two a gleam of
positive hatred shone in his eyes.
"I say, I'm so sorry," said the Sheep, with his apologetic smile. "Of
course I remember hearing about the buzzards, but somehow I didn't
connect this bird with them. And it was such an east shot--"
"Yes," said Rupert; "that was the trouble."
Kathleen found him in the gun-room smoothing out the feathers of the dead
bird. She had already been told of the catastrophe.
"What a horrid misfortune," she said sympathetically.
"It was my dear Robbie who first discovered them, the last time he was
home on leave. Don't you remember how excited he was about them? Let's
go and have some tea."
Both bridge and shooting were given a rest for the next two or three
weeks. Death, who enters into no compacts with party whips, had forced a
Parliamentary vacancy on the neighbourhood at the least convenient
season, and the local partisans on either side found themselves immersed
in the discomforts of a mid-winter election. Rupert took his politics
seriously and keenly. He belonged to that type of strangely but rather
happily constituted individuals which these islands seem to produce in a
fair plenty; men and women who for no personal profit or gain go forth
from their comfortable firesides or club card-rooms to hunt to and fro in
the mud and rain and wind for the capture or tracking of a stray vote
here and there on their party's behalf--not because they think they ought
to, but because they want to.
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