There are some pheasants, though. We saw them flying when we were out this morning."Thorpe wondered if it would be possible to consult her upon the question of apparel. Clearly, he ought to make some difference in his garb, yet the mental vision of him-self in those old Mexican clothes revealed itself now as ridiculously impossible. He must have been out of his mind to have conceived anything so preposterous as rigging himself out, among these polished people, like a cow-puncher down on his luck.
"I wonder when your brother will expect to start,"he began, uneasily. "Perhaps I ought to go and get ready.""Ah, here comes his man," remarked the sister.
A round-faced, smooth-mannered youngster--whom Thorpe discovered to be wearing cord-breeches and leather leggings as he descended the stairs--advanced toward him and prefaced his message by the invariable salutation.
"His Lordship will be down, sir, in ten minutes--and he hopes you'll be ready, sir," the valet said.
"Send Pangbourn to this gentleman's room," Miss Winnie bade him, and with a gesture of comprehensive submission he went away.
The calm readiness with which she had provided a solution for his difficulties impressed Thorpe greatly.
It would never have occurred to him that Pangbourn was the answer to the problem of his clothes, yet how obvious it had been to her. These old families did something more than fill their houses with servants;they mastered the art of making these servants an integral part of the machinery of existence. Fancy having a man to do all your thinking about clothes for you, and then dress you, into the bargain. Oh, it was all splendid.
"It seems that we're going shooting," Thorpe found himself explaining, a few moments later in his bedroom, to the attentive Pangbourn. He decided to throw himself with frankness upon the domestic's resourceful good-feeling.
"I haven't brought anything for shooting at all. Somehow Igot the idea we were going to do rough riding instead--and so I fetched along some old Mexican riding-clothes that make me feel more at home in the saddle than anything else would.
You know how fond a man gets of old, loose things like that.
But about this shooting--I want you to fix me out.
What do I need? Just some breeches and leggings, eh? You can manage them for me, can't you?"Pangbourn could and did--and it was upon his advice that the Mexican jacket was utilized to complete the out-fit. Its shape was beyond doubt uncommon, but it had big pockets, and it looked like business. Thorpe, as he glanced up and down his image in the tall mirror of the wardrobe, felt that he must kill a large number of birds to justify the effect of pitiless proficiency which this jacket lent to his appearance.
"We will find a cap below, sir," Pangbourn announced, with serenity, and Thorpe, who had been tentatively fingering the big, flaring sombrero, thrust it back upon its peg as if it had proved too hot to handle.
Downstairs in the hall there was more waiting to be done, and there was nobody now to bear him company. He lit another cigar, tried on various caps till he found a leathern one to suit him, and then dawdled about the room and the adjoining conservatory for what seemed to him more than half an hour. This phase of the aristocratic routine, he felt, did not commend itself so warmly to him as did some others.
Everybody else, however, seemed to regard it as so wholly a matter of course that Plowden should do as he liked, that he forbore formulating a complaint even to himself.
At last, this nobleman's valet descended the stairs once more. "His Lordship will be down very shortly now, sir," he declared--"and will you be good enough to come into the gun-room, sir, and see the keeper?"Thorpe followed him through a doorway under the staircase--the existence of which he had not suspected--into a bare-looking apartment fitted like a pantry with shelves.
After the semi-gloom of the hall, it was almost glaringly lighted. The windows and another door opened, he saw, upon a court connected with the stable-yard.
By this entrance, no doubt, had come the keeper, a small, brown-faced, brown-clothed man of mature years, with the strap of a pouch over his shoulder, who stood looking at the contents of the shelves. He mechanically saluted Thorpe in turn, and then resumed his occupation.
There were numerous gun cases on the lower shelf, and many boxes and bags above.
"Did his Lordship say what gun?" the keeper demanded of the valet. He had a bright-eyed, intent glance, and his tone conveyed a sense of some broad, impersonal, out-of-doors disdain for liveried house-men.
The valet, standing behind Thorpe, shrugged his shoulders and eloquently shook his head.
"Do you like an 'ammerless, sir?" the keeper turned to Thorpe.
To his intense humiliation, Thorpe could not make out the meaning of the query. "Oh, anything'll do for me,"he said, awkwardly smiling. "It's years since I've shot--Idaresay one gun'll be quite the same as another to me."He felt the knowing bright eyes of the keeper taking all his measurements as a sportsman. "You'd do best with 'B,' sir, I fancy," the functionary decided at last, and his way of saying it gave Thorpe the notion that "B"must be the weapon that was reserved for school-boys.
He watched the operation of putting the gun together, and then took it, and laid it over his arm, and followed the valet out into the hall again, in dignified silence.
To the keeper's remark--"Mr. Balder has its mate with him today, sir," he gave only a restrained nod.
