Mr. Chalk spent the time in preparations for the voyage, purchasing,
among other necessaries, a stock of firearms of all shapes and sizes,
with which he practised in the garden. Most marksmen diminish gradually
the size of their target; but Mr. Chalk, after starting with a
medicine-bottle at a hundred yards, wound up with the greenhouse at
fifteen. Mrs. Chalk, who was inside at the time tending an invalid
geranium, acted as marker, and, although Mr. Chalk proved by actual
measurement that the bullet had not gone within six inches of her, the
range was closed.
[Illustration: "Purchasing firearms, with which he practised in the
garden."]
By the time the alterations on the _Fair Emily_ were finished the summer
was nearly at an end, and it was not until the 20th of August that the
travellers met on Binchester platform. Mrs. Chalk, in a smart yachting
costume, with a white-peaked cap, stood by a pile of luggage discoursing
to an admiring circle of friends who had come to see her off. She had
shut up her house and paid off her servants, and her pity for Mrs.
Stobell, whose husband had forbidden such a course in her case, provided
a suitable and agreeable subject for conversation.
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