We crossed the yard, and went on past the inevitable _cuvier_, through a garden full of all-coloured dahlias and wall-fruit, and under the arch of a gateway into a wide shrubbery with elm and chestnut trees shading close-shorn expanses of grass, and a serpentine piece of water, on the farther side of which the largest meadow that we had seen in the much-cultivated Médoc stretched away to a pine wood. ‘In winter they chase the woodcock there,’ remarked Mdlle. Rosalie. ‘We chase him also in Ireland,’ we said, ‘but he is a difficult bird to catch.’ It then transpired that our hostesses were sportswomen, and had shot almost every bird that there was to be shot in their district, from sparrows to quails. ‘_Nous chassons de race_,’ they said; ‘our grandmother was a noted shot in her day.’ We felt an incongruity about a French grandmother being _bon tireur_ that was probably derived from a confused belief that the period of grandmothers in France was coincident with the costumes on a Watteau fan; but the descendants of this sporting lady assured us that it had been, and was, quite _comme il faut_ in the Médoc for ladies to shoot, and they further imparted to us in confidence that their stepmother disapproved deeply of their sporting proclivities--a fact that did not take us by surprise. They were altogether a revelation, these Mdlles. de Q., with English manners and tastes, and even clothes, while Great Britain’s language and literature were a sealed book to them, except for a few absurd phrases they had picked up at their convent school at Lyons from a ‘_demoiselle écossaise, je crois, qui s’appelait Haut-Brion_.’ We wondered why a Scotch young lady should have been named after one of the classified clarets, and it was only in subsequent conversation that it transpired that the demoiselle lived in Dublin and was called O’Brien. As we wandered back through the beautifully laid-out grounds, with such tropical plants as are usually associated with Kew Gardens meeting us on every hand, we heard how our hostesses loved riding, and hoped to get an _amazone_ made by an English tailor, and inquiry elucidated the fact that the _amazones_ in which they rode at present were made with long full skirts, and were generally as absurd as their name.