To be sensible, she would say, was to be successful and effective; to be otherwise was to fail and to be ineffective.
Very well, then.
* * * * * At the beginning of September Dick Guiseley came to Merefield to shoot grouse.

The grouse, as I think I have already remarked, were backward this year, and, after a kind of ceremonial opening, to give warning as it were, on the twelfth of August, they were left in peace.

Business was to begin on the third, and on the evening of the second Dick arrived.
He opened upon the subject that chiefly occupied his thoughts just now with Archie that night when Lord Talgarth had gone to bed.

They were sitting in the smoking-room, with the outer door well open to admit the warm evening air.

They had discussed the prospects of grouse next day with all proper solemnity, and Archie had enumerated the people who were to form their party.