prosecuted."

"Let's go in here and pick orchids," Bertram suggested, leaning
over the gate. "Just see how pretty they are! The scented white
butterfly! It loves moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Monteith, wouldn't a
few long sprays of that lovely thing look charming on your dinner-
table?"

"But it's preserved," Philip interposed with an awestruck face.
"You can't go in there: it's Sir Lionel Longden's, and he's awfully
particular."

"Can't go in there? Oh, nonsense," Bertram answered, with a merry
laugh, vaulting the gate like a practised athlete. "Mrs. Monteith
can get over easily enough, I'm sure. She's as light as a fawn.
May I help you over?" And he held one hand out.

"But it's private," Philip went on, in a somewhat horrified voice;
"and the pheasants are sitting."

"Private? How can it be? There's nothing sown here. It's all wild
wood; we can't do any damage. If it was growing crops, of course,
one would walk through it not at all, or at least very carefully.
But this is pure woodland. Are the pheasants tabooed, then? or why
mayn't we go near them?"

"They're not tabooed, but they're preserved," Philip answered
somewhat testily, making a delicate distinction without a
difference, after the fashion dear to the official intellect.
"This land belongs to Sir Lionel Longden, I tell you, and he