"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays handicapped by the litany. "Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily cramming his mouth with slugs. "Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't eat sweets just before lunch." "Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load." "Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in. Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away. "And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of a well-recommended country inn. "Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good month here and break the back of Joan of Arc." "What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired. John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance. "What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was the right tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who was examining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin of a white elephant." "But it's brown," Harold objected. John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness. "Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just as lobsters turn red when they're boiled." "Who shot it?" "Oh, I don't know--probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where I bought it." "When?" "Well, I can't exactly say when--but probably about three years ago." "Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?" "Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants." "Perhaps he shot this one." "Perhaps he did." "Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you bought it?" "I shouldn't be surprised," said John. "Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer. When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friends with shopkeepers." "Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for his nailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maud knew.