peal at Graeme, as who
would say--"Sorry to leave you, but this is the kind of thing I have
to put up with,"--and walked slowly away. Scamp grovelled flat and
crawled to the door like a long hairy caterpillar.

"Oh, let them stop," said Graeme. "I like them by me," and the
culprits turned hopefully with pricked ears and anxious faces.

"Mais non! They are troublesome beasts. Allez, Ponch! Allez, Scamp! A
couche!"--and their heads and ears drooped and they slunk away.

But, presently, there came a rustling at the wide-open window which
gave on to the field at the back, and Graeme laughed out--and he had
not smiled for days--at sight of two deprecatingly anxious faces
looking in upon him,--a solemn brown one with black spots above the
eloquent grave eyes, and a roguish white one with pink blemishes on a
twisting black nose. And while the large brown face loomed steadily
above two powerful front paws, the small white face only appeared at
intervals as the nervous little body below flung it up to the sill in
a series of spasmodic leaps.

"We would esteem it a very great favour, if you are quite sure it
would not inconvenience you," said Punch, as plain as speech.

"Do, do, do, do, do give us leave!" signalled Scamp, with every twist
of his quivering nose, and every gleam of his glancing eyes, and every
hair on end.

A click of the tongue, a noiseless graceful bound, and Punch was at
his side. A wild scrambling rush, a wriggle on the sill, a patter over
the window-seat, and Scamp was twisting himself into white
figure-eights all over the room, with tremendous energy but not a
sound save the soft pad of his tiny dancing feet.

Then, as he ate, the great brown head pillowed itself softly on his
knee, and the eloquent brown eyes looked up into his in a way that a
stone image could hardly have resisted. The while Scamp, on his hind
legs, beat the air frantically with his front paws to attract
attention to his needs and danced noiselessly all over the floor.

He gauged their characters with interest. When he gave them morsels
turn about, Punch awaited his with gentlemanly patience, and even when
purposely passed by in order to see what he would do, obtruded his
claims by nothing more than a gentle movement of the head on his
friend's knee; while Scamp, in like case, twisted himself into knots
of anxiety and came perilously near to utterance.

The difference between them when, through lack of intimate knowledge
of their