[Illustration: QUITE UNPARDONABLE.

_Assistant_ (_in his most insinuating manner_). "IN YOUR CASE, MADAM,
I SHOULD CERTAINLY CONSIDER _FAST_ COLOURS MOST SUITABLE." RESULT!]

* * * * *

CONVERSATIONAL HINTS FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS.

THE SMOKING-ROOM.

(_WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED "ANECDOTES."_)

Let us imagine, if you please, that the toils and trampings of the day
are over. You are staying at a comfortable country-house with friends
whom you like. You have had a good day at your host's pheasants
and his rabbits. Your shooting has been fairly accurate, not
ostentatiously brilliant, but on the whole satisfactory. You have
followed out the hints given in my previous Chapters, and are
consequently looked upon as a pleasant fellow, with plenty to say for
himself. After tea, in the drawing-room, you have had an hour or two
for the writing of letters, which you have of course not written, for
the reading of the morning papers from London which you have skimmed
with a faint interest, and for the forty or eighty or one hundred
and twenty winks in an armchair in front of the fire, which are by
no means the least pleasant and comforting incident in the day's
programme. You have dressed for dinner in good time; you have tied
your white tie successfully "in once;" you have taken in a charming
girl (ROSE LARKING, let us say) to dinner. The dinner itself has been
good, the drawing-room interlude after dinner has been pleasantly