.

The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and
break, but he got the letter, sank down on the bed's edge and strove to
read,--set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he
could make nothing of it--nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who
came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full
glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the
stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother's letter
crushed in his nerveless hand.

CHAPTER IV THE SEASON OPENS

Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom
trays were sent, was served in the English fashion--any other method or
compromise being impossible.

Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually
had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable
to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene
and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a
concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although
the custom had already become practically universal in American country
houses where guests were entertained.

But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants,
always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented
human bric-a-brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants
hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched,
frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar
cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.

"We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white
man's country," he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste
and his wife's absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual
foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. "You'll load your own
guns and you'll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs
will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee's
opinion on shooting driven birds from rocking-chairs or potting tame
deer from grand-stands, they can have it right now!"

Usually nobody wanted his further opinion; and sometimes they got it
and sometimes not, if his wife was within earshot. Otherwise Ferrall
appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his
pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if
some considered his vigour in business to be l