p." We, too, shuddered in anticipation. And
Mary Ellen was almost as nervous as we, for hers was the responsibility.

The puppies were more entrancing every day. Tiny slips of dewy blue showed
between their furry eyelids. They learned to walk, and roll over, and to
right themselves after being turned over by their mother's playful paws. We
were squatting on the floor very busy with them, when Mary Ellen entered,
round-eyed with fear.

"'Tis herself is in the dining-room," she gasped.

"Not Mrs. Handsomebody?"

"Sorra a thing else. Put them pups in their basket and come out and shut
the dure. Ye'd better go into the yard and be at some quate game. Oh,
Lord--" and she hurried back to her mistress.

This time we were safe, but there was tomorrow ahead, with certain
discovery.

Mr. Watlin, propped in the open doorway, brought his ingenious mind to bear
upon the problem.

"Now if Mrs. 'Andsomebody could be put under an obligation to that little
dog, she'd probably tike it right into 'er 'eart and 'ome. If that little
dog, f'rinstance, should save Mrs. 'Andsomebody from drowning--does she
ever go in bathing?"

"_Likely_, at _her_ age, in _December_!" sneered Mary Ellen. "Try again."

"We might hold her under water in the bath-tub till Giftie would fish her
out," suggested Angel.

It was a colourful spectacle to visualize, and we dallied with it a space
before abandoning it as impracticable. It seemed too much to hope that Mrs.
Handsomebody, the bath-tub and Giftie could all be assembled at the
critical moment.

But Mr. Watlin was not to be rebuffed. "Then there's burglars," he went on.
"Suppose Mrs. 'Andsomebody's valuables was to be rescued from a burglar for
'er. She wouldn't be able to do enough for a little dog that 'ad chased 'im
out of this very scullery, f'rinstance."

We were thrilled by hope. "But where is the burglar?"

"Well, I could produce the burglar in a pinch. He's reformed but he'd
undertake a little job like this if he know'd it was for partic'lar friends
of mine, and not a bit of 'arm in it. Is it a go?"

Mystery brooded over the house of Handsomebody all that afternoon and
evening. We were allowed to have no finger in this portentous pie.

Mr. Watlin, with some small assistance from Mary Ellen, engineered the
thing himself. We were sent to bed at the usual hour, and played at
burglars on, and under, the bed, to while away the intervening hours.

III

It must have been almost midnight