My darling young lady, I reply, your letter has made a deep impression on me.  Dr. JOHNSON did, as you say, live many years ago; so many years ago, in fact, that (as a little friend of Mr. Punch once said, with a sigh, on hearing that someone would have been one hundred and fifty years old if he had been alive at the present day) he must be “a orfle old angel now.”  The word “lunch” is short, crisp, and appetising.  The word “luncheon” is of a certain pomposity, which, though it may suit the mansions of the great, is out of place when applied to the meals of active sportsmen.  So we will continue, if you please, to speak of “lunch.”  And now for your question.  My charming ROSE, this little treatise does not profess to do anything more than teach young sportsmen how to converse.  I assume that they have learnt shooting from other instructors.  And as to the details of shooting-parties, how they should be composed, what they should do or avoid, and how they should bear themselves generally—­the subject is too great, too solemn, too noble to be entered upon with a light heart.  At any rate, that is not my purpose here.  It was rude—­very rude—­of FRED to say you were a bore—­and I am sure it wasn’t true.  I can picture you tripping daintily along with your pretty companions to the lunch rendezvous.  You are dressed in a perfectly fitting, tailor-made dress, cut short in the skirt, and displaying the very neatest and smallest pair of ankles that ever were seen.  And your dear little nose is just a leetle—­not red, no, certainly not red, but just delicately pink on its jolly little tip, having gallantly braved the north wind without a veil.  To call you a bore is absurd.  But men are such brutes, and it is as certain as that two and two (even at our public schools) make four, that ladies are—­what shall I say?—­not so popular as they always ought to be when they come amongst shooters engaged in their sport.  Even at lunch they are not always welcomed with enthusiasm.  This is, perhaps, wrong, for, after all, they can do no harm there.

But, darling ROSE, I am sure FRED was perfectly right to send you home again directly the meal was over, though it must have wrung his manly heart to part from EMILY RAYBURN.  Even, I, the veteran sportsman Punch, have qualms when a poor bird has been merely wounded, or when a maimed hare shrieks as the dog seizes it.  I cannot, as I say, discuss the ethics of the question.  The good shot is the merciful shot.  But, after all, in killing of every kind, whether by the gun or the butcher’s knife, there is an element of cruelty.  And therefore, my pretty ROSE, you must keep away from the shooting.  Besides, have I not seen a good shot “tailor” half-a-dozen pheasants in succession, merely because a chattering lady—­not a dear, pleasant little lump of delight like you, ROSE—­had posted herself beside him, and made him nervous?  By all means come to lunch if you must, but, equally by all means, leave the guns to themselves afterwards.  As for ladies who themselves shoot, why the best I can wish them is, that they should promptly shoot themselves.  I can’t abide them.  Away with them!