tipodes with its legs crossed. The
poulterer lost his temper, very absurdly...."

"Well--did he catch the hare? I mean the first hare."

"That I can't say. Both vanished, and I suspect the hare got away. I'm
sure of one thing, that if Achilles did catch him he didn't know what to
do with him. He has not the sporting spirit. Cats interest him in his
native town, but when they show fight he comes and complains to me that
they are out of order. He overhauled a kitten three weeks old once, that
had come out to see the world, and it defied him to mortal combat.
Achilles talked to me all the way down the street about that kitten."

"I want to know what happened next." From Gwen.

"Yes--silly old chatterbox!--keep to the point." Thus Irene; and Lady
Ancester, who has been accepting the hare and the cats with dignity,
even condescension, adds:--"We were just at the most interesting part
of the story." This was practically her ladyship's first sight of the
son of the man she had gone so near to marrying over five-and-twenty
years ago. The search to discover a _modus vivendi_ between a past and
present at war may have thrown her a little out of her usual demeanour.
Gwen wondered why mamma need be so ceremonious.

Adrian was perfectly unconscious of it, even if Irene was not. He ran
on:--"Oh--the story! Yes--Achilles forgot himself, and was off after the
hare like a whirlwind.... I don't know, Lady Ancester, whether you have
ever blown a whistle in the middle of an otherwise unoccupied landscape,
with no visible motive?"

Her ladyship had not apparently. Irene found fault with the narrator's
style, suggesting a more prosaic one. But Gwen said: "Oh, Irene dear,
what a perfect _sister_ you are! Why can't you let Mr. Torrens tell his
tale his own way?"

So Mr. Torrens went on:--"It doesn't matter. If you had ever done so, I
believe you would confirm my experience of the position. If Orpheus had
whistled, instead of singing to a lute, Eurydice would have stopped with
Pluto, and Orpheus would have cut a very poor figure. I began to
perceive that Achilles wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare
wouldn't, all along. So I walked on and got to a wood of oaks with an
interesting appearance. The interesting appearance was inviting, so I
went inside. Achilles was sure to turn up, I thought. Poor dear!--I
didn't see him for some days after that, when I came to and heard all
about it. He had been very uneasy about me, I'm afraid."