ators were admitted except Lord
Brackenshaw's tenants and their families, and of these it was chiefly
the feminine members who used the privilege, bringing their little boys
and girls or younger brothers and sisters. The males among them
relieved the insipidity of the entertainment by imaginative betting, in
which the stake was "anything you like," on their favorite archers; but
the young maidens, having a different principle of discrimination, were
considering which of those sweetly-dressed ladies they would choose to
be, if the choice were allowed them. Probably the form these rural
souls would most have striven for as a tabernacle, was some other than
Gwendolen's--one with more pink in her cheeks and hair of the most
fashionable yellow; but among the male judges in the ranks immediately
surrounding her there was unusual unanimity in pronouncing her the
finest girl present.

No wonder she enjoyed her existence on that July day. Pre-eminence is
sweet to those who love it, even under mediocre circumstances. Perhaps
it was not quite mythical that a slave has been proud to be bought
first; and probably a barn-door fowl on sale, though he may not have
understood himself to be called the best of a bad lot, may have a
self-informed consciousness of his relative importance, and strut
consoled. But for complete enjoyment the outward and the inward must
concur. And that concurrence was happening to Gwendolen.

Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the prettiest weapons in
the world for feminine forms to play with? They prompt attitudes full
of grace and power, where that fine concentration of energy seen in all
markmanship, is freed from associations of bloodshed. The time-honored
British resource of "killing something" is no longer carried on with
bow and quiver; bands defending their passes against an invading nation
fight under another sort of shade than a cloud of arrows; and poisoned
darts are harmless survivals either in rhetoric or in regions
comfortably remote. Archery has no ugly smell of brimstone; breaks
nobody's shins, breeds no athletic monsters; its only danger is that of
failing, which for generous blood is enough to mould skilful action.
And among the Brackenshaw archers the prizes were all of the nobler
symbolic kind; not properly to be carried off in a parcel, degrading
honor into gain; but the gold arrow and the silver, the gold star and
the silver, to be worn for a long time in sign of achievement and