His very appearance on the cliff, and the power of thinking of him when he was gone, for a while banished all tedium from her life.

"Why should you shoot the poor gulls ?" That was the first question she asked him; and she asked it hardly in tenderness to the birds, but because with the unconscious cunning of her sex she understood that tenderness in a woman is a charm in the eyes of a man.
"Only because it is so difficult to get at them," said Fred.

"I believe there is no other reason,--except that one must shoot something." "But why must you ?" asked Mrs.O'Hara.
"To justify one's guns.

A man takes to shooting as a matter of course.
It's a kind of institution.

There ain't any tigers, and so we shoot birds.