‘I am sure,’ she said warmly, ‘papa and Harry are not cruel; nobody is kinder than papa; but they enjoy the fun and exercise so much they never think of any cruelty in sport.’ ‘It is the word “sport,” said Gerald, ‘that I object to as much as the thing. No doubt it is necessary that the animals should be killed for human life. But the killing of them is a painful necessity; it is a thing to be done reluctantly, not a thing to be fond of or proud of. That anybody should shoot hundreds of beautiful living creatures and leave others to perish in silent agony, and then that he should make a boast of what he has done and call it “sport”--that is what strikes me as so surprising. It will not be so always. I think the time will come when sportsmen will be looked upon only as a superior kind of butchers.’ ‘Well, I don’t mind you calling them so,’ said Miss Venniker, adding, with a laugh, ‘all except papa and Harry, of course. But I think that time will be a long while in coming.’ ‘You may disapprove a thing,’ said Gerald, ‘without condemning the people who do it. No one can be blamed for being in advance of his age. Mr. Newton, of Olney, never enjoyed sweeter hours of communion with God than when he was sailing to the West Indies with a cargo of slaves.’ There was a slight pause, and then Miss Venniker resumed. ‘What I do wish,’ she said, ‘is that when some rare beautiful bird makes its way to England it were not immediately shot by somebody. That seems so selfish. One man gets the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--of shooting it, but how many would be pleased if England could become once more the home of beautiful creatures that are now extinct!’ ‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘that is the very height of selfishness. But you remember Wordsworth’s lines--I think they just express what we have been saying-- “Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”’ Another day they talked of politics. Lady Venniker was present then. It was intended that Harry should one day stand for the county. The Vennikers had represented it, with some few intervals, in the House of Commons for nearly a century. In the old days the seat was considered safe in itself. It was still rendered safe by the personal popularity of Lord Venniker. But Lady Venniker feared that politics had a tendency to blunt the delicate edge of the moral sense. She thought the danger was not that public men, in a democracy, would do the thing which they believed to be wrong, but that there was nothing which they would not believe to be right. ‘_Vox populi vox Dei_,’ said Gerald. ‘There is a divinity, I suppose, in numbers, and the will of the people ought to be done. That is the fundamental principle of democracy.’