Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of course in New York.
So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.
"These little brown snipe you call woodcock," he began; "we bagged nine brace, d'you see?
But of all the damnable bogs and covers--" "Rotten," said Mortimer thickly; "Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps, and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--" "Where do you expect to find native woodcock ?" demanded Ferrall, laughing.
"On the table hereafter," growled Mortimer.
"Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants," retorted Ferrall amiably; "Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking." "Not I," said Voucher; "the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit the beggars--" "Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting," observed Ferrall; "that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel.

Crack! and," turning to Alderdene, "it's like taking money from you, Blinky--which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before dressing." His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed knickerbockers and heather-spats.

Mortimer, industriously distending his skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter.

The aromatic perfume of the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a servant.
"This salt air keeps one thirsty," he observed to Ferrall; then something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips.

He had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.
He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept into his lean checks.
Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the result of the first day's shooting after all those idle months.