"Don't reprove him," said the Baron. "It is a comfort to be reminded that for the first three or four years of our lives we all tell the truth. But I mean you to like me, Leo, all the same." "I hate 'oo," said Leo, frankly--he always expressed himself in strong Saxon English--"but 'oo love my mamma." This, in a shrill childish treble, was awkward for the rest of the party. Mrs. Fairfax Torrington gave an arch glance at Mr. FitzJesse. Dopsy reddened, and exploded in a little spluttering laugh behind her napkin. Christabel looked divinely unconscious, smiling down at her boy, whose chair had been placed at the corner of the table close to his mother. "It is a poet's privilege to worship the beautiful, Leo," said the Baron, with a self-satisfied smirk. "The old troubadour's right of allegiance to the loveliest--as old as chivalry." "And as disreputable," said FitzJesse. "If I had been one of the knights of old, and had found a troubadour sneaking about my premises, that troubadour's head should have been through his guitar before he knew where he was--or he should have discovered that my idea of a common chord was a halter. But in our present age of ultra-refinement the social troubadour is a gentleman, and the worship of beauty one of the higher forms of culture." The Baron looked at the journalist suspiciously. Bold as he was of speech and bearing, he never ventured to cross swords with Mr. FitzJesse. He was too much afraid of seeing an article upon his Jersey antecedents or his married life in leaded type in the _Sling_. Happily, Mr. Tregonell was not at luncheon upon this particular occasion. He had gone out shooting with Jack Vandeleur and little Monty. It was supposed to be a great year for woodcock, and the Squire and his friends had been after the birds in every direction, except St. Nectan's Kieve. He had refused to go there, although it was a tradition that the place was a favourite resort of the birds. "Why don't you shoot, Mrs. Tregonell?" asked Mrs. Torrington; "it is just the one thing that makes life worth living in a country like this, where there is no great scope for hunting." "I should like roaming about the hills, but I could never bring myself to hit a bird," answered Christabel. "I am too fond of the feathered race. I don't know why or what it is, but there is something in a bird which appeals intensely to one's pity. I have been more sorry than I can say for a dying sparrow; and I can never teach myself to remember that birds are such wretchedly cruel and unprincipled creatures in their dealings with one another that they really deserve very little compassion from man."