the
muck. Won't you help her?"

"No one helped our cat," came the inevitable reminder.

"I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that," cried Octavian,
with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches
forward.

"Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?"

"Yes," screamed Octavian.

"Holding a candle?"

"An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?"

Octavian agreed to both suggestions.

"For a long, long time?"

"For half an hour," said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his
voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a German
king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas-
time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to
have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly in
their eyes.

"All right," came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a moment
later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, who
lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scrambling
gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass that
separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like
an unwilling cork from it's slushy embrace. A few minutes later he was
listening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her
previous experience of filthy spectacles had been on a notably smaller
scale.

That same evening when twilight was deepening into darkness Octavian took
up his position as penitent under the lone oak-tree, having first
carefully undressed the part. Clad in a zephyr shirt, which on this
occasion thoroughly merited its name, he held in one hand a lighted
candle and in the other a watch, into which the soul of a dead plumber
seemed to have passed. A box of matches lay at his feet and was resorted
to on the fairly frequent occasions when the candle succumbed to the
night breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, but
as Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance he felt
certain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-shared
vigil.

And the next morning his eyes were gladdened by a sheet of copy-book
paper lying beside the blank wall, on which was written the message "Un-
Beast."

THE PHANTOM LUNCHEON

"The Smithly-Dubbs are in Town," said Sir James. "I wish you would show
them some attention. Ask them to lunch with you at the Ritz or
somewhere."