There was another gun and a ferret
in the house also, and he said that as soon as we got home he was
going to take me out fowling on rabbits.
A little later in the day we set off, and I nearly laughed to see
Michael's eagerness that I should turn out a good shot.
We put the ferret down in a crevice between two bare sheets of rock,
and waited. In a few minutes we heard rushing paws underneath us,
then a rabbit shot up straight into the air from the crevice at our
feet and set off for a wall that was a few feet away. I threw up the
gun and fired.
'Buail tu e,' screamed Michael at my elbow as he ran up the rock. I
had killed it.
We shot seven or eight more in the next hour, and Michael was
immensely pleased. If I had done badly I think I should have had to
leave the islands. The people would have despised me. A 'duine
uasal' who cannot shoot seems to these descendants of hunters a
fallen type who is worse than an apostate.
The women of this island are before conventionality, and share some
of the liberal features that are thought peculiar to the women of
Paris and New York.
Many of them are too contented and too sturdy to have more than a
decorative interest, but there are others full of curious
individuality.
This year I have got to know a wonderfully humorous girl, who has
been spinning in the kitchen for the last few days with the old
woman's spinning-wheel.
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