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Updated: June 10, 2025
They put Bobby Junior into the barn, cleaned the Flobert, changed their hunting clothes, and answered with alacrity the summons to the dining room. After they were well started with the meal, Mr. Orde came in and sat down. He nodded abstractedly, and had little to say. The boys were too far down in remorse to care to bring up any of the subjects near their hearts. Finally Mrs.
"Perhaps it doesn't cost more'n a thousand dollars!" he said to himself. And he had already made up his mind to save a thousand dollars for the purpose of getting a boat. The boat idea lost attraction. His papa had agreed to give half. Bobby lost himself in an exciting daydream involving actual possession of the Flobert Rifle.
His fingers trembling, he opened the breach of the Flobert and loaded; then cautiously thrusting the muzzle through an opening in the reeds, tried to aim. But his heart was thumping like a hammer, and do his best he could not hold the wavering sights in alignment. In vain he recalled all the many principles of accurate shooting he had so laboriously acquired in his target practice.
A small calibre rifle such as a 22-calibre Flobert will afford considerable pastime at target practice and is also excellent to hunt snakes and frogs along some brook or creek, but generally a boy with a rifle is a public nuisance, and as a rule is liable to arrest in possessing it.
He resolved that, on the way home, if the curtains were not down, he would take another look at the weapon. The curtains were not down; but now, attached to the Flobert Rifle, was a stencilled card. Bobby set himself to reading it. "First Prize," he deciphered, "An-nual Trap Shoot, Monrovia Sportsman's Club, Sep. 10, 1879." For some moments the significance of this did not reach him.
Orde came on the run likewise the cook, and the butcher. They found Bobby dancing wildly around and around, hugging close to his heart the Flobert rifle. "Bobby, Bobby!" cried Mrs. Orde. "What is it? What's the matter? Are you hurt?" She caught sight of the gun, leaped to the conclusion that Bobby had shot himself and sank limply into a chair. "See! Look here!" cried Bobby.
For little Willy, in consideration of the aristocratic propensities one might expect, or at any late encourage, in the heir to a large estate, there was a Flobert rifle, the strap of which was ornamented after an entirely new method by cutting out thin layers of the leather and inserting gilt arabesques and figures.
Thus Bobby had passed through the extremes of hope, of anticipation, of disappointment and of despair. The Flobert Rifle on which he had set his heart, which he had firmly made up his mind to buy as soon as he could save up enough on an allowance of one cent a day, had been withdrawn from sale and offered as prize for the fall trap shooting.
The influence sank deep and became part of the permanent background against which their lives were to be thrown. At first some doubt was expressed as to the wisdom of that Flobert rifle. To turn two small boys loose with a deadly weapon seemed to Mrs. Orde a rather strong temptation of Providence. Mr. Kincaid spoke for them.
It was something to be dreamed of, with its beautiful blued-steel octagon barrel, its gleaming gold-plated locks and its polished stock. Bobby was just under ten years old; but he could have told you all about that Flobert Rifle its weight, the length of its barrel, the number of grains of both powder and lead loaded in its various cartridges.
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