"I suppose," said she, clasping her fingers together in her lap--"I
suppose you are all eagerness about to-morrow morning?"
"Oh, I am not going shooting to-morrow," said he.
"What!" she exclaimed. "To be on a grouse-moor on the Twelfth, and not
go out?"
"It is because it is the Twelfth; I don't want to spoil sport," said he,
modestly. "And I don't want to make a fool of myself either. If I could
shoot well enough, and if there were a place for me, I should be glad to
go out with them; but my shooting is, like my fishing, a relic of
boyhood's days; and I should not like to make an exhibition of myself
before a lot of crack shots."
"That is only false pride", said she, in her curiously direct,
straightforward way. "Why should you be ashamed to admit that there are
certain things you can't do as well as you can do certain other things?
There is no particular virtue in having been brought up to the use of a
gun or rod. Take your own case. You are at home on the stage. There you
know everything--you are the master, the proficient. But take the crack
shots and put them on the stage, and ask them to do the simplest
thing--then it is their turn to be helpless, not to say ridiculous.
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