George nodded.

Mrs. Pendyce looked abstractedly at his tie.

"I think it might be two sovereigns; one seems very little to lose,
because I do so want him to win. Isn't Helen Bellew perfectly charming
this morning! It's delightful to see a woman look her best in the
morning."

George turned, to hide the colour in his cheeks.

"She looks fresh enough, certainly."

Mrs. Pendyce glanced up at him; there was a touch of quizzicality in one
of her lifted eyebrows.

"I mustn't keep you, dear; you'll be late for the shooting."

Mr. Pendyce, a sportsman of the old school, who still kept pointers,
which, in the teeth of modern fashion, he was unable to employ, set his
face against the use of two guns.

"Any man," he would say, "who cares to shoot at Worsted Skeynes must
do with one gun, as my dear old father had to do before me. He'll get a
good day's sport--no barndoor birds" (for he encouraged his pheasants to
remain lean, that they might fly the better), "but don't let him expect
one of these battues--sheer butchery, I call them."

He was excessively fond of birds--it was, in fact, his hobby, and he had