We have been all alive with acting."
"Indeed! and what have you been acting?"
"Oh! they'll tell you all about it."
"The _all_ will soon be told," cried Tom hastily,
and with affected unconcern; "but it is not worth
while to bore my father with it now. You will hear
enough of it to-morrow, sir. We have just been trying,
by way of doing something, and amusing my mother,
just within the last week, to get up a few scenes,
a mere trifle. We have had such incessant rains almost
since October began, that we have been nearly confined
to the house for days together. I have hardly taken out
a gun since the 3rd. Tolerable sport the first three days,
but there has been no attempting anything since.
The first day I went over Mansfield Wood, and Edmund took
the copses beyond Easton, and we brought home six brace
between us, and might each have killed six times as many,
but we respect your pheasants, sir, I assure you,
as much as you could desire. I do not think you will find
your woods by any means worse stocked than they were.
_I_ never saw Mansfield Wood so full of pheasants in my
life as this year.
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