I couldn't have shot that bird to save my life," and he touched it with the tip of his tan leather boot as if to make sure it was a real bird.
The girl was sitting on the ground, indifferently eating some of the cooked pork.

She did not answer.

Somehow the young man felt uncomfortable.
He sat down, and took up his tin cup, and went at his breakfast again; but his appetite seemed in abeyance.
"I've been trying myself to learn to shoot during the last week," he began soberly.

"I haven't been able yet to hit anything but the side of a barn.
Say, I'm wondering, suppose I had tried to shoot at those birds just now and had missed, whether you wouldn't have laughed at me--quietly, all to yourself, you know.

Are you quite sure ?" The girl looked up at him solemnly without saying a word for a full minute.
"Was what I said as bad as that ?" she asked slowly.
"I'm afraid it was," he answered thoughtfully; "but I was a blamed idiot for laughing at you.