account. You will get it in due course. Close the door
quietly, please, as you go out."

On his way back to his own room Luke again encountered Arthur Dobson.

"It's all right," said Luke, "I said you didn't tell me, but had given
it away by blushing when I chanced to speak of it."

"Couldn't you have thought of a better one than that?"

"Oh, it's all right. And I don't mind telling you I've given him a
pretty good dressing-down. I let him have the rough side of my
tongue."

"Ah," said Dobson, "now that really is something like a lie."

Luke went back to his own room and sat there deep in thought. Why was
everybody so hard and cold? Diggle, Dobson, Mabel--they were all so
cruel and rude to him. Nobody loved him. Except Dot and Dash, and
possibly ...

No, that was not to be thought of.

All the same it reminded him that it was time for him to brush his
hair and wash his little hands, and go up to lunch at Gallows.

2

It was a large luncheon party, for Gallows was full of guests.
Everybody was very merry and bright, except Luke. Tyburn was specially
elated, for his little drive with the zebras had only cost thirteen
hundred altogether. There had apparently been a terrific rag the night
before. While the guests were at dinner, Tyburn arranged for a number
of wild beasts to be brought up from the Mammoth Circus. One was put
into the bedroom of each guest to greet him or her on going to bed.
No, there had been no real damage done. One of the lions had fainted.
It had been given sal volatile, and had recovered. Only three of the
animals and two of the guests were missing. And one of the guests was
a Bishop who had never been really wanted. Jona told the whole story
hilariously.

Why was it, Luke asked himself, that she was always so merry and
bright with others, and so very different when she was with him? Could
it be that she wore a mask to the rest of the world, and disclosed her
real self only to him? It could. It could also be just the other way
round. That was the annoying part of it.

He was depressed during lunch. The story of Tyburn's practical joke of
the previous evening had upset him. He did not like these practical
jokes. He was nervous. He felt that at any moment, at a preconcerted
signal, the table might blow up, or the ceiling fall down. Everybody
else would laugh, and he would hate it. He seldom laughed at anything
anybody else laughed at, though he enjoyed some little jokes of his
own that