orses and dogs, and I heard a
great deal about "laying on the hounds," which culminated in a rather
vulgar story of how a beater who "wasn't nippy on his pins" had been
"peppered from behind," whereupon he had "bellowed like a bull" until
"soothed down by a sov."

I cannot say how long the talk would have continued in this manner if
old Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a serious
subject.

It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel had
died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death was
nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during the
period of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government had
required on our return from abroad.

The dog having died at sea, I presumed it had been buried there, but no,
that seemed to shock the company as an unfeeling supposition. The ship's
carpenter had made a coffin for it--a beautiful one of mahogany with a
plate-glass inset at the head, and a gilt-lettered inscription below,
giving the dog's name, Prue, and its age, three.

In this condition it had been brought ashore, and was now lying in a
kind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to be buried
in the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the company, all dressed
in black, were to follow in procession as at a human funeral.

I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these incredible
arrangements, and at the close of it I said in a clear, emphatic voice:

"I must ask you to be good enough not to do that, please."

"Why not, my dear?" said Alma.

"Because I do not wish and cannot permit it," I answered.

There was an awkward pause after this unexpected pronouncement, and when
the conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not always added
to my happiness) caught the half-smothered words:

"Getting a bit sidey, isn't she?"

Nevertheless, when I rose to leave the dining-room, Alma wound her arm
round my waist, called me her "dear little nun," and carried me off to
the hall.

There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk became
as free, as it often is among fashionable ladies of a certain class.

Mr. Eastcliff's Camilla told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a
"dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman (the
same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeated
the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "A
parlour-