omehow
and got drowned. Of course we couldn't use the water that a dead body
had been floating in, and there was no other supply for miles round, so
we had to come away then and there. Now what do you say to that?"

"'Ah, that a linnet should die in the Spring,'" quoted Tony Luton with
intense feeling.

There was an immediate outburst of hilarity where Lady Peach had
confidently looked for expressions of concern and sympathy.

"Isn't Tony just perfectly cute? Isn't he?" exclaimed a young American
woman, with an enthusiasm to which Lady Peach entirely failed to respond.
She had intended following up her story with the account of another
tragedy of a similar nature that had befallen her three years ago in
Argyllshire, and now the opportunity had gone. She turned morosely to
the consolations of a tongue salad.

At the centre table the excellent von Tolb led a chorus of congratulation
and compliment, to which Gorla listened with an air of polite detachment,
much as the Sheikh Ul Islam might receive the homage of a Wesleyan
Conference. To a close observer it would have seemed probable that her
attitude of fatigued indifference to the flattering remarks that were
showered on her had been as carefully studied and rehearsed as any of her
postures on the stage.

"It is something that one will appreciate more and more fully every time
one sees it . . . One cannot see it too often . . . I could have sat and
watched it for hours . . . Do you know, I am just looking forward to to-
morrow evening, when I can see it again. . . . I knew it was going to be
good, but I had no idea--" so chimed the chorus, between mouthfuls of
quail and bites of asparagus.

"Weren't the performing wolves wonderful?" exclaimed Joan in her fresh
joyous voice, that rang round the room like laughter of the woodpecker.

If there is one thing that disturbs the complacency of a great artist of
the Halls it is the consciousness of sharing his or her triumphs with
performing birds and animals, but of course Joan was not to be expected
to know that. She pursued her subject with the assurance of one who has
hit on a particularly acceptable topic.

"It must have taken them years of training and concentration to master
those tricycles," she continued in high-pitched soliloquy. "The nice
thing about them is that they don't realise a bit how clever and
educational they are. It would be dreadful to have them putting on airs,
wouldn't it? And yet I supp