Countrymen often display a dry humour all their own. At a shooting
party we fell in with a beater, into whose charge one of the guns had
given a well-filled cartridge-bag. Every now and again we noticed that
the beater thrust his hand into the bag, and regarded the cartridges
which he pulled out with a puzzled look. We inquired the reason, and it
transpired that some of the cartridges were loaded with No. 5 shot, and
some with No. 5-1/2, and that the beater had been asked to sort them by
their owner, a gun of indifferent merits. He said, in continuation of
his story: "He did tell I he can't get on nohow wi' sich mixed tackle.
_I_ reckon if there weren't no shots in 'em at all 'twouldn't make
ne'er a marsel o' difference."
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