“Well!  All I have to say is, that if Belforest is to be nothing but a people’s park for all the ragamuffins in Kenminster, there will soon not be a head of game in the place, and I shall be obliged to shoot elsewhere!”

Poor Caroline!  If there was a thing she specially hated, it was a battue, both for the thing itself, and all the previous preparation of preserving, and of prosecuting poachers; and yet sons have their mothers so much in their power by that threat of staying away from home, that she could not help faltering, “Oh, Allen, I’ll do my best, and tell the keepers to be very careful, and lock the gates of all the preserves.”

Allen saw she was vexed, and spoke more kindly, “There, never mind, mother.  It is more than can be expected that ladies should see things in a reasonable light.”

“What is the reasonable light?” asked Bobus.

Allen did not choose to hear, regarding Bobus not indeed as a woman, but as something as little capable of appreciating his reason.  It was Janet who took up the word.  “The reasonable light is that the enjoyment of the many should be sacrificed to the vanity of the few, viz., that all Kenminster should be confined to dusty roads all the year round in order that Allen may bring down the youngest son of the youngest son of a German prince for one day to fire amongst some hundreds of tame pheasants who come up expecting to be fed.”

“Oh, yes,” said Allen, “we all know that you are a regular out-and-out democrat, Janet.”

“I confess, without being a democrat,” said his mother, “that I do wonder that you gentlemen, who wish the game laws to continue, should so work them as to be more aggravating than ever.”

“It is a simple question of the rights of property,” said Allen.  “If I do a thing, I like it to be well done, and not half-and-half.”

Caroline rose from the table, dreading, like many a mother, a regular skirmish about game-preserving, between those who cared to shoot, and those who did not.  Like other ladies, she could never understand exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to have game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest of the chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they told her was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and all the footpaths.  Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were those of a former generation, was quite satisfied; Allen never would be so; and it was one of the few bones of contention in the family.

For Allen was walking through Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be “good form.”