this pathetically themselves. "You see," Mrs. Currie would observe
in apology, "Bingo is a dog that does not attach himself easily to
strangers"--though, for that matter, I thought he was unpleasantly ready
to attach himself to _me_.

I did try hard to conciliate him. I brought him propitiatory buns, which
was weak and ineffectual, as he ate them with avidity, and hated me
as bitterly as ever; for he had conceived from the first a profound
contempt for me, and a distrust which no blandishments of mine could
remove. Looking back now, I am inclined to think it was a prophetic
instinct that warned him of what was to come upon him through my
instrumentality.

Only his approbation was wanting to establish for me a firm footing
with the Curries, and perhaps determine Lilian's wavering heart in my
direction; but, though I wooed that inflexible poodle with an assiduity
I blush to remember, he remained obstinately firm.

Still, day by day, Lilian's treatment of me was more encouraging; day by
day I gained in the esteem of her uncle and aunt; I began to hope that
soon I should be able to disregard canine influence altogether.

Now there was one inconvenience about our villa (besides its flavour of
suicide) which it is necessary to mention here. By common consent all
the cats of the neighbourhood had selected our garden for their evening
reunions. I fancy that a tortoise-shell kitchen cat of ours must have
been a sort of leader of local feline society--I know she was "at home,"
with music and recitations, on most evenings.

My poor mother found this to interfere with her after-dinner nap, and no
wonder; for if a cohort of ghosts had been "shrieking and squealing,"
as Calpurnia puts it, in our back garden, or it had been fitted up as a
creche for a nursery of goblin infants in the agonies of teething, the
noise could not possibly have been more unearthly.

We sought for some means of getting rid of the nuisance: there was
poison, of course; but we thought it would have an invidious appearance,
and even lead to legal difficulties, if each dawn were to discover an
assortment of cats expiring in hideous convulsions in various parts of
the same garden.

Firearms too were open to objection, and would scarcely assist my
mother's slumbers; so for some time we were at a loss for a remedy. At
last, one day, walking down the Strand, I chanced to see (in an evil
hour) what struck me as the very thing: it was an air-gun of superior
con