e of 'em!"

"Don't jaw! Tell him to take the beast's petticoat off," said Sir
Christopher Tomling.

Lord Lundie returned, very little winded, through a gap higher up the
hedge.

"They're all out, thank goodness!" he cried, "but I've raided what I
could. Macrons glaces, candied fruit, and a bag of oranges."

"Excellent!" said the world-renowned contractor.

"Jimmy, you're the light-weight; jump up on the organ and impale these
things on the leaves as I hand 'em!"

"I see," said Jimmy, capering like a springbuck. "Upward and onward, eh?
First, he'll reach out for--how infernal prickly these leaves are!--this
biscuit. Next we'll lure him on--(that's about the reach of his
arm)--with the marron glare, and then he'll open out this orange. How
human! How like your ignoble career, Bubbles!"

With care and elaboration they ornamented that tree's lower branches
with sugar-topped biscuits, oranges, bits of banana, and marrons glares
till it looked very ape's path to Paradise.

"Unchain the Gyascutis!" said Sir Christopher commandingly. Giuseppe
placed the monkey atop of the organ, where the beast, misunderstanding,
stood on his head.

"He's throwing himself on the mercy of the Court, me lud," said Jimmy.
"No--now he's interested. Now he's reaching after higher things. What
wouldn't I give to have here" (he mentioned a name not unhonoured in
British Art). "Ambition plucking apples of Sodom!" (the monkey had
pricked himself and was swearing). "Genius hampered by Convention? Oh,
there's a whole bushelful of allegories in it!"

"Give him time. He's balancing the probabilities," said Lord Lundie.

The three closed round the monkey,--hanging on his every motion with
an earnestness almost equal to ours. The great judge's head--seamed and
vertical forehead, iron mouth, and pike-like under-jaw, all set on that
thick neck rising out of the white flannelled collar--was thrown against
the puckered green silk of the organ-front as it might have been a cameo
of Titus. Jimmy, with raised eyes and parted lips, fingered his grizzled
chestnut beard, and I was near enough to-note, the capable beauty of his
hands. Sir Christopher stood a little apart, his arms folded behind his
back, one heavy brown boot thrust forward, chin in as curbed, and black
eyebrows lowered to shade the keen eyes.

Giuseppe's dark face between flashing earrings, a twisted rag of red and
yellow silk round his throat, turned from the reaching yearning monkey
to