"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." "Perhaps," said he, rather tentatively, "you mean that we should all of us keep to our own walks in life?" "I'm sure I don't mean anything of the kind," said she, with much frankness. "I only mean that if you are not a first-rate shot, you need not be ashamed of it; you should remember there are other things you can do well. And really you must go out to-morrow morning. My brother was talking about it at breakfast; and I believe the proposal is that you go with him and Captain Waveney. If any little mistake is made, Captain Waveney is the man to retrieve it--at least so I've heard them say." "At all events," said he, "if I go with them at all, it will not be under false pretences. I shall warn them, to begin with, that I am a bad shot; then I can't be found out. And they must put me in a position where I can't do much harm." "I dare say you shoot very well," she said, with a smile. "Gentlemen always talk like that on the evening before the Twelfth, if they have come to a strange moor."