Page:Jean Webster--Much ado about Peter.djvu/129

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THE RISE OF VITTORIO
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or box. All of these things, and several others, Mr. Harry Jasper could do. It was from observing him that Peter's definition had gained such precision.

The billiard-room mantelpiece at Jasper Place held a row of silver cups, relics of Mr. Harry's college days. The hall at Jasper Place testified to Mr. Harry's prowess with the rifle. A moose head decorated the arch, a grizzly bear skin stretched before the hearth, and a crocodile's head plucked from the mud of its native Nile emerged grinning from the chimney-piece. Some day Mr. Harry was going to India after a tiger skin to put over the couch; in the meanwhile he contented himself with duck-shooting on Great South Bay, or an occasional dip into the Adirondacks.

Patrick had accompanied him on the last of these trips, and it had been a long-standing promise that Peter should go on the next. Their camp was to be in Canada this year, as soon as the open season for caribou arrived.