I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well as Lord Ragnall himself, though that is saying a great deal, for he was a lovely shot.
"Bravo!" he said at the end of the beat.

"I believe you have got a chance of winning your L5, after all." When, however, at luncheon, more than an hour later, I found that I was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did everybody else.

On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in a keeper's house, was a very pleasant meal, though Van Koop talked so continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our host and some of the other gentlemen, who were very pleasant people.

At last he began to patronize me, asking me how I had been getting on with my "elephant-potting" of late years.
I replied, "Fairly well." "Then you should tell our friends some of your famous stories, which I promise I won't contradict," he said, adding: "You see, they are different from us, and have no experience of big-game shooting." "I did not know that you had any, either, Sir Junius," I answered, nettled.

"Indeed, I thought I remembered your telling me in Africa that the only big game you had ever shot was an ox sick with the red-water.
Anyway, shooting is a business with me, not an amusement, as it is to you, and I do not talk shop." At this he collapsed amid some laughter, after which Scroope, the most loyal of friends, began to repeat exploits of mine till my ears tingled, and I rose and went outside to look at the weather.
It had changed very much during luncheon.