raise his eyes and find the great
moon-faced spectacles fixed upon him with a beseeching, reproachful
glare in the light of them. This would irritate him intensely. He would
say:

"You'll know me next time, Mary."

She would blush crimson and then, with trembling mouth, answer:

"I wasn't looking."

"Yes, you were."

"No, I wasn't."

"Of course, you were--staring as though I were an Indian or Chinaman. If
my face is dirty, say so."

"It isn't dirty."

"Well, then--"

"You're always so cross."

"I'm not cross--only you're so silly--"

"You usen't always to say I was silly. Now you always do--every minute."

"So you are." Then as he saw the tears coming he would get up and go
away. He didn't mean to be unkind to her; he was fond of her--but he
hated scenes.

"Mary's always howling about something now," he confided to Helen.

"Is she?" Helen answered with indifference. "Mary's such a baby."

So Mary began to attribute everything to the dog. It seemed to her then
that she met the animal everywhere. Cow Farm was a rambling building,
with dark, uneven stairs, low-ceilinged rooms, queer, odd corners, and
sudden unexpected doors. It seemed to Mary as though in this place there
were two Hamlets. When, in the evening she went to her room, hurrying
through the passages for fear of what she might see, stumbling over
the uneven boards, sniffling the mice and straw under the smell of
her tallow candle, suddenly out of nowhere at all Hamlet would appear
scurrying along, like the White Rabbit, intent on serious business.

He came so softly and with so sudden a flurry and scatter when she did
hear him that her heart would beat for minutes afterwards, and she would
not dare that night to search, as she usually did, for burglars under
her bed, but would lie, quaking, hot and staring, unable to sleep. When
at last dreams came they would be haunted by a monstrous dog, all hair
and eyes, who, with padding feet, would track her round and round a room
from which there was no escape. Hamlet, being one of the wisest of dogs,
very quickly discovered that Mary hated him. He was not a sentimental
dog, and he did not devote his time to inventing ways in which he might
placate his enemy, he simply avoided her. But he could not hinder
a certain cynical and ironic pleasure that he had of, so to speak,
flaunting his master in her face. He clung to Jeremy more resolutely
than ever, would jump up at him, lick his hands and tumble abou