“What’s the matter with your clothes?”

“That’s what I asked Ben Nevis when he took exception to them at breakfast.”

“I think they look very good.”

It is true that her husband looked like an even more brightly-coloured full-page advertisement in Esquire than he had on the Twelfth, but Carrie thought men ought to look like that when they were indulging in country sports and pastimes.

“It seems they’re too bright,” said Chester. “Ben Nevis says I’ll never get within a mile of a stag dressed like I am.”

“But you’re not wearing anything as bright as his kilt.”

“That isn’t what he thinks. Oh, he was very nice about it. He blamed it more on the stags than on my clothes. He said stags were exceptionally nervous animals and need to be humoured. It was my pullover which worried him most. He asked if it was made by the Indians.”

“Made by Indians?” Carrie echoed indignantly. “Why, that’s the pullover I gave you last Christmas, Chester. It’s a genuine Fair Isle product. I paid thirty dollars for that pullover.”

“Well, Ben Nevis looked at it the way he looked at the shirts of those hikers. But the whole rig-out wasn’t his idea of the way anybody ought to be dressed for stalking stags. He said there was a big tradition behind this business of stalking and he wanted me to start in the steps of this tradition right away. Well, what’s it matter anyway? I’ll be stalking by myself presently on the Knocknacolly forest, and I’ll wear what I like there. What I like,” he repeated.

He came back a few minutes later in a suit of darkish green tweed.

“I didn’t know you had a suit as quiet as that, Chester,” said his wife.

“I didn’t know it myself. That’s the advantage of a good valet. He makes it his job to be prepared for emergencies. Well, seeing I’m dressed for a funeral I hope we’ll kill a pretty big stag. I’ll look kind of foolish if we come home with only a couple of rabbits.”

“When do you think you will be back, Chester?”

“I don’t know at all. But there’s a look in Ben Nevis’s eye which makes me think he intends to kill a stag to-day even if involves killing me to do it.”

“Perhaps I’ll go over to Knocknacolly with Kilwhillie or perhaps I won’t. It looks to me as if we’d have a downpour before long.”

“It doesn’t look too good, does it?”

“That’ll mean you’ll give up stalking and come home?”