And sure enough, right across the narrow path in front of them
stood a short, fat, stumpy, unimpressive little man, with a very
red face, and a Norfolk jacket, boiling over with anger.

"What are you people doing here?" he cried, undeterred by the
presence of a lady, and speaking in the insolent, supercilious
voice of the English landlord in defence of his pheasant preserves.
"This is private property. You must have seen the notice at the
gate, 'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'"

"Yes, we did see it," Bertram answered, with his unruffled smile;
"and thinking it an uncalled-for piece of aggressive churlishness,
both in form and substance,--why, we took the liberty to disregard
it."

Sir Lionel glared at him. In that servile neighbourhood, almost
entirely inhabited by the flunkeys of villadom, it was a complete
novelty to him to be thus bearded in his den. He gasped with anger.
"Do you mean to say," he gurgled out, growing purple to the neck,
"you came in here deliberately to disturb my pheasants, and then
brazen it out to my face like this, sir? Go back the way you came,
or I'll call my keepers."

"No, I will NOT go back the way I came," Bertram responded
deliberately, with perfect self-control, and with a side-glance at
Frida. "Every human being has a natural right to walk across this
copse, which is all waste ground, and has no crop sown in it. The
pheasants can't be yours; they're common property. Besides, there's
a lady. We mean to make our way across the copse at our leisure,
picking flowers as we go, and come out into the road on the other