"You must remember there wouldn't be any grouse at all if they weren't shot," he said seriously, "and besides, wild birds don't die comfortably in their beds if they're not killed by man. A charge of shot is more merciful than a death from cold and starvation, or even from the attack of a hawk or any of a bird's other natural enemies. Just think. Wouldn't you rather have the violent end yourself than the slow, lingering one?"
"Yes," admitted Juliet, "I would. I believe you're right But I don't really much like seeing it happen, all the same."
"I think you'd get used to it; it's a matter of habit. I believe everything is a matter of habit, or almost everything. I suppose one gets used to any kind of horror in time."
He spoke reflectively; more, or so it seemed to Juliet, as if trying to convince himself than her; and as he finished speaking, she was conscious that his eyes, which had never left her face while they were talking, had done so now, and were fixed on some object or person behind her. She turned instinctively and saw Miss Maisie Tarver approaching, a brace of grouse swinging in each hand.
"I've got them all, right here, David," she informed him, as she came up. She was a tall dark girl, with the look of breeding which often proves so confusing to Europeans when they first come in contact with certain of her countrywomen. "This bird," she added, holding up one which still fluttered despairingly, "was a runner, but now he won't do any more running than the colour of my new pink shirt-waist; and that's guaranteed a fast tint, I guess."
Juliet looked away, trying not to show her dismay at the struggles of the wounded bird.
"Here, give me that bird, Maisie," said David rather abruptly. "I'll knock it on the head."
"Oh, I can do that, if it makes Miss Byrne feel badly," Maisie laughed.
Raising her small foot on to a stone, she began to make ineffectual attempts to beat the bird's head against her toe. David snatched it from her unceremoniously, and turned his back while he put an end to the poor creature's sufferings. His face was very red. When he had killed the bird he tossed it to Lord Ashiel's loader, and strode away across the heather.
Maisie looked at Juliet with a laugh.
"Your English young men are perfectly lovely," she remarked, "and David is just elegant, I think, or I'd not have gone and engaged myself to be led to the altar by him; but I can't kind of get used to the British way of looking at things. It's quite remarkable the manner you people have of admiring a girl one moment, because she's a good sport, and throwing fits of disapprobation the next, because she tries to act like she is one. Why, David looked at me just now as if he'd have taken less than two cents to put knock-out drops in my next cocktail."