“Well done, Frank,” cried Chisholm, laughing. “Now,” he continued, pulling a letter from his pocket, “How will this suit? It is from a farmer friend of mine in Berkshire, a rough and right sort of a fellow. He farms about five hundred acres close to the Thames. He invites us down for a rabbit shoot, shall we go?”
“Oh! by all means,” cried Frank.
“I’m ready,” said Fred quietly.
And that “rabbit shoot” began Frank Willoughby’s sporting adventures. They had a whole week of it, and very much they enjoyed it. Chestnut Farm was a dear old-fashioned, rustic, rumble-tumble of a place, with a rolling country all around it, and the river quietly meandering through its midst. They pitched their tent not far from the river; under canvas they lived and ate and slept. Fred Freeman was a capital cook; he built his fire of wood and hung his kettle-pot gipsy fashion on a tripod, and the curries and stews he used to turn out were quite delightful. The farmer and his wife would fain have had them to live in their hospitable dwelling, but being told that Frank was undergoing the process of hardening off and general tuition in camp and sporting life, the good farmer looked at the young man for a moment or two from top to bottom, just as if he had been a colt.
“Oh!” he said, with a grunt of satisfaction, “bein’ broke, is he? Well, a rare, fine, upstanding one he be. He’ll do.”
But the farmer’s wife sent to the tent every day the freshest of butter and sweetest of creamy milk, with eggs that never had time to get cool, and so, on the whole, they were very well off.
It was deliciously comfortable, so thought Frank, this camping out. His bed was a hammock, and, though there were at first some things he looked upon as drawbacks, he soon got used to them. If a heavy shower came on it made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers, and large drops used to ooze in through the canvas. The gnats’ bites were hard to put up with, but Chisholm comforted him by bidding him “just wait until he went to India and had a touch of the jungle bugs.” Early to bed and early to rise was our heroes’ motto; early to bed to calm and dreamless slumber, such as your dwellers within brick walls never know; early to rise to have a header in the river, and to return to breakfast as fresh as a jack; early to rise to get the lines and punt clear and ready for a few hours’ fishing; early to rise if only to hear the birds singing, to watch the squirrels skipping about aloft among the trees, or to observe the thousand-and-one queer ways of the tiny dwellers by the river side, friends in fur and friends in feather. Why, in one week Frank felt himself growing quite a naturalist.
They had come down to shoot rabbits, but it must not be supposed that this was all the sport they had down by the charming river; for many wild-fowl fell to Frank’s gun, and he procured a good many beautiful specimens of birds, which he took the pains to skin and preserve for the purpose of having them stuffed. A good deal of their time was spent in fishing. They did not catch a Thames salmon, it is true, and grayling were not in season; but there were trout and perch and jack in abundance, and one day, greatly to his joy, Frank landed a lordly pike.
“I must tell you this, Mr O’Grahame and gen’l’m’n all,” said the farmer to our friends on the very first day of their arrival, “I have an order to kill five hundred to seven hundred rabbits, so there is plenty of sport for you all, and ’specially for the young ’un that’s bein’ broke; but mind, gen’l’m’n, ’ware hare, that’s wot I says, ’ware hare. My man’ll go with ye and see it is all right like, and my boys will carry the bags.”
“Whatever does he mean by ‘’ware hare’?” asked Frank afterwards.
“Why, that we mustn’t shoot a hare on any account,” replied Chisholm; “rabbits and nothing but rabbits.”
“Gearge,” the farmer’s man, went with them every day to help to carry the rabbits our sportsmen killed. On the other hand, there were boys in the rear to help Gearge. Besides Gearge and the boys, there were two dogs – a beautiful setter and a pointer, but good useful country dogs – dogs that did not think it beneath their dignity to retrieve as well as set and point. The most curious part of the whole business to young Frank, was the fact that these dogs knew a hare from a rabbit at first sight far better than he did. Well, to a young sportsman, to see a beautiful hare pass within easy shooting distance was a great temptation to fire. Frank had his doubts whether Gearge always knew one from the other, or t’other from which, because, no matter what it was, if Gearge saw only a bit of brown fur flitting from one bush to another, he sang out in stentorian tones, “’Ware hare.”
So it was “’Ware hare” all day long with Gearge. But once Frank did make a mistake, or his gun did, for the latter seemed to rise to his shoulder of its own accord, and next moment a hare was dead.
The pointer brought it and laid it solemnly down at Frank’s feet, and looked up into his face.
“See what you’ve done,” he seemed to say; “here is a pretty kettle of fish. What do you think of yourself? and how do you feel?”
And when Gearge came up and saw the result of the accident, his red, round face, which, as a rule, was wreathed in smiles, got long, and his jaw fell, while his eyes seemed wanting to jump out of their sockets.
“Well, I never?” said Gearge, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously in his cow-gown, “and I warned ye sir, too.”
“Bag him,” said Frank, “and never mind.”
“Bag ’im!” cried Gearge, aghast. “Bag he, bag a hare! No, sir, not if I knows it. Master’d give me the sack myself. We’ll leave ’im to the blue-bottles and the beetles; but oh! sir, in future, ’ware hare.”
“You seem fond of hare-shooting,” said Fred that evening, when Frank told him his adventure, or rather misadventure. “Why, if you had been where I was last winter you would have had hare-shooting to your heart’s content.”
“Beaters was it you had?” asked Chisholm.
“Yes, we had no dogs; but good sport, mind you – right and left sometimes, and one to each barrel if you only chose to hold straight.”
About the third morning, when Gearge came to the tent as usual, his face seemed rounder and redder than ever; his eyes, too, were so wreathed in smile-begotten wrinkles that they had almost disappeared. It was moreover observed that the pockets of his cow-gown were more bulky than usual.
“We’ll have a rare lark to-day,” said Gearge, pulling out first one polecat ferret and then another.
And so they had; for what with working the banks all the morning and shooting the rabbits in the open that succeeded in running the blockade, they had wonderful bags. Though Frank didn’t say much, he was glad to get back to the tent; his feet were swollen, and he could hardly carry his gun. He was certainly “bein’ broke” with a vengeance.
Chapter Three
Frank is thoroughly “Hardened Off” – Deer-stalking in the Highlands – Partridge, Pheasant, and Duck Shooting – “Good-bye” – “None but the Brave deserve the Fair.”
“How does he harden, Fred?” cried Chisholm, bursting all unannounced one morning into the dining-room of a North Wales hotel, where Freeman and young Willoughby were just putting the finishing touches to a glorious breakfast, with boiled eggs and mountain trout. Chisholm had been absent for a whole week. “How does he harden?”
“I think he is getting on famously. He’s curing nicely.”
“I declare,” said Frank, laughing, “you talk of me as if I were a ham or something; and Chisholm asks about me in the same tone of voice he would use if he wanted to know how your