Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/78

68 "Proper grandmother!" he exclaimed. "It don't seem to help you much. The best thing you fellows can do is to learn to shoot my way, and then perhaps you may be able to hit oftener."

When the Champion had finished shooting, he went home to his dinner, but many of us stood about, talking over our great escape.

"I feel as if I had done that myself," said Pepton. "I am almost as proud as if I had shot—well, not an eagle, but a soaring lark."

"Why, that ought to make you prouder than the other," said I; "for a lark, especially when it's soaring, must be a good deal harder to hit than an eagle."

"That's so," said Pepton, reflectively; "but I'll stick to the lark. I'm proud."

During the next month our style of archery improved very much, so much, indeed, that we increased our distance, for gentlemen, to forty yards, and that for ladies to thirty, and also had serious thoughts of challenging the Ackford club to a match. But as this was generally understood to be a crack club, we finally determined to defer our challenge until the next season.

When I say we improved, I do not mean all of us. I do not mean Miss Rosa. Although her attitudes were as fine as ever, and every motion as true to rule as ever, she seldom made a hit. Pepton actually did try to teach her how to aim; but the various methods of pointing the arrow which he suggested resulted in such wild shooting, that the boys who picked up the arrows never dared to stick the points of their noses beyond their boarded barricade, during Miss Rosa's turns at