Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 39).djvu/224

"I don't know that I'm so set on shooting to-day, myself," said Martin, "Will you come round the links?"

"Coming out with the guns to-day, Elsa?"

"I am going out in the motor with Mr. Barstowe," said Elsa.

"The motor!" cried Mr. Barstowe, "Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry of motion. I never ride in a motor-car without those words of Shakespeare's ringing in my mind: 'I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.'"

"I shouldn't give way to that sort of thing if I were you," said Martin, " The police are pretty down on road-hogging in these parts."

"Mr. Barstowe was speaking figuratively," said Elsa, with disdain.

"Was he?" grunted Martin, whose sorrows were tending to make him every day more like a sulky schoolboy. "I'm afraid I haven't a poetic soul."

"I'm afraid you haven't," said Elsa.

There was a brief silence. A bird made itself heard in a neighbouring tree.

"'The moan of doves in immemorial elms,'" quoted Mr. Barstowe, softly.

"Only it happens to be a crow in a beech," said Martin, as the bird flew out.

Elsa's chin tilted itself in scorn. Martin turned on his heel and walked away.

"It's the wrong way, sir; it's the wrong way," said a voice. "I was hobserving you from a window, sir. It's Lady Angelica over again. Hopposition is useless, believe me, sir."

Martin faced round, flushed and wrathful. The butler went on, unmoved: "Miss Elsa is going for a ride in the car to-day, sir."

"I know that."

"Uncommonly tricky things, these motor-cars. I was saying so to Roberts, the chauffeur, just as soon as I 'eard Miss Elsa was going out with Mr. Barstowe. I said, 'Roberts, these cars is tricky; break down when you're twenty miles from hanywhere as soon as look at you. Roberts I said, slipping him a sovereign, 'ow awful it would be