coincidence that made him select a beer barrel, for
thereby hung a tragic tale. He and his twin-brother had been adopted
from infancy by the Sergeants' Mess and had lived in peace and
plenty--in fact in too much plenty, for I regret to say that Daisy's
brother died of drink from having formed the discreditable habit
of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own
inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so
successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one
of the daily papers. This so delighted the amateur undertakers that
Daisy's brother was at once exhumed and re-buried with further pomp
and circumstance. Daisy meanwhile, feeling himself of less consequence
than the departed hero, began to mope; so to save life and reason he
was sent to us "to cheer and cherish," as the Sergeants put it.

An egotistical irascible bachelor seagull; yet his vices, and he was
made up of them, became virtues in our eyes.

The morning after his arrival he went for a solemn tour of
investigation, finally taking up his abode in the middle of the
tennis-court, as being to his mind the most salubrious spot--and from
there he ruled despotically. "That blooming bird fears neither man nor
devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in
her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly
bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he
was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never
again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared once
more, emboldened by the presence of his unwilling young wife, who
accompanied him, tied by a rope to his collar.

Percy and I watched them advance from afar and waited in suspense
for the sequel. Daisy was taking a post-prandial nap inside his beer
barrel. There was a breathless hush, followed by a pandemonium of
sound, masculine and feminine cries of distress mingled with raucous
shrieks of anger, and then we saw our valiant couple in slow but
ignominious retreat. Horatio was dragging his spouse along on her
back, with legs in air and bulging eyes! What had happened in the
interim we never knew, but both Mr. and Mrs. Horatio bore marks of
battle, and they were sadder and wiser dogs for many days to come.

Percy, always deprecatingly anxious to find favour in Daisy's eyes,
tore down to the shore one morning before breakfast and returned with
a large pailful of s