Tales of the Long Bow
to have a little table laid for three in a sort of veranda open to the garden. When the three sat down to it, he looked across at the lady and said: "I fear I must exhibit myself as a crank; one of those cranks your cousin disapproves of, Miss Smith. I hope it won't spoil this little lunch for anybody else. But I am going to have a vegetarian meal."
"Are you?" she said. "I should never have said you looked like a vegetarian."
"Just lately I have only looked like a fool," he said dispassionately; "but I think I'd sooner look a fool than a vegetarian in the ordinary way. This is rather a special occasion. Perhaps my friend Hood had better begin; it's really his story more than mine."
"My name is Robert Owen Hood," said that gentleman, rather sardonically. "That's how improbable reminiscences often begin; but the only point now is that my old friend here insulted me horribly by calling me Robin Hood."
"I should have called it a compliment," answered Audrey Smith. "But why did he call you Robin Hood?"
"Because I drew the long bow," said the lawyer.
"But to do you justice," said the Colonel, "it seems that you hit the bull's-eye."
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