When he came back the keeper was waiting, a friendly old man, who seemed delighted at the idea of some sport.  Jack said, “Look here, I have arranged it all.  Shooting to-day, and you can have father’s gun; he hardly ever uses it, and I have my own.  Fishing to-morrow, and so on alternately.  There are heaps of rabbits up the valley—­ the place crawls with them.”

Howard taught Jack for an hour, as clearly and briskly as he could, making him take notes.  He found him quick and apt, and at the end, Jack said, “Now if I could only do this every day at Cambridge, I should soon get on.  My word, you do do it well!  It makes me shudder to think of all the practice you must have had.”

Howard set Jack down to prepare some further work by himself, and attacked his own papers; and very soon it was time for lunch.

Mrs. Graves greeted Jack with much affectionateness, and asked what they had arranged for the afternoon.  Howard told her, and added that he hoped she did not object to shooting.

“No, not at all,” said Mrs. Graves, “if you can do it conscientiously—­I couldn’t!  As usual I am hopelessly inconsistent.  I couldn’t kill things myself, but as long as I eat meat, I can’t object.  It’s no good arguing about these things.  If one begins to argue about destroying life, there are such excellent reasons for not eating anything, or wearing anything, or even crossing the lawn!  I have long believed that plants are conscious, but we have got to exist somehow at each other’s expense.  Instinct is the only guide for women; if they begin to reason, they get run away with by reason; that is what makes fanatics.  I won’t go so far as to wish you good sport, but you may as well get all the rabbits you can; I’ll send them round the village, and try to salve my conscience so.”

They talked a little about the books Howard had been recommending, but Mrs. Graves was bent on making much of Jack.

“I don’t get you here often by yourself,” she said.  “I daren’t ask a modern young man to come and see two old frumps—­one old frump, I mean!  But I gather that you have views of your own, Jack, and some day I shall try to get at them.  I suppose that in a small place like this we all know a great deal more about each other than we suspect each other of knowing.  What a comfort that we have tongues that we can hold!  It wouldn’t be possible to live, if we knew that all the absurdities we pride ourselves on concealing were all perfectly well known and canvassed by all our friends.  However, as long as we only enjoy each other’s faults, and don’t go in for correcting them, we can get on.  I hope you don’t disapprove of people, Jack!  That’s the hopeless attitude.”

“Well, I hate some people,” said Jack, “but I hate them so much that it is quite a pleasure to meet them and to think how infernal they are; and when it’s like that, I should be sorry if they improved.”

“I won’t go as far as that,” said Howard.  “The most I do is to be thankful that their lack of improvement can still entertain me.  One can never be thankful enough for really grotesque people.  But I confess I don’t enjoy seeing people spiteful and mean and vicious.  I want to obliterate all that.”