p to ask?"

"No, not to ask that, but for a description of the purchaser's
appearance."

Oh, Mary, Mary.

Here is the appearance of purchaser as supplied at the Arcade:--looked
like a military gentleman; tall, dark, and rather dressy; fine Roman
nose (quite so), carefully trimmed moustache going grey (not at all);
hair thin and thoughtfully distributed over the head like fiddlestrings,
as if to make the most of it (pah!); dusted chair with handkerchief
before sitting down on it, and had other oldmaidish ways (I should like
to know what they are); tediously polite, but no talker; bored face; age
forty-five if a day (a lie); was accompanied by an enormous yellow dog
with sore eyes. (They always think the haws are sore eyes.)

"Do you know anyone who is like that?" Mary's husband asked me
innocently.

"My dear man," I said, "I know almost no one who is not like that," and
it was true, so like each other do we grow at the club. I was pleased,
on the whole, with this talk, for it at least showed me how she had
come to know of the St. Bernard, but anxiety returned when one day from
behind my curtains I saw Mary in my street with an inquiring eye on
the windows. She stopped a nurse who was carrying a baby and went into
pretended ecstasies over it. I was sure she also asked whether by any
chance it was called Timothy. And if not, whether that nurse knew any
other nurse who had charge of a Timothy.

Obviously Mary suspicioned me, but nevertheless, I clung to Timothy,
though I wished fervently that I knew more about him; for I still met
that other father occasionally, and he always stopped to compare notes
about the boys. And the questions he asked were so intimate, how Timothy
slept, how he woke up, how he fell off again, what we put in his bath.
It is well that dogs and little boys have so much in common, for it was
really of Porthos I told him; how he slept (peacefully), how he woke
up (supposed to be subject to dreams), how he fell off again (with one
little hand on his nose), but I glided past what we put in his bath
(carbolic and a mop).

The man had not the least suspicion of me, and I thought it reasonable
to hope that Mary would prove as generous. Yet was I straitened in
my mind. For it might be that she was only biding her time to strike
suddenly, and this attached me the more to Timothy, as if I feared she
might soon snatch him from me. As was indeed to be the case.

VI. A Shock

It was on a May day,