ands of the patiently-manoeuvring mother. With eyes blazing with
excitement and a voice heavily escorted with exclamation marks she made a
dramatic announcement.

"Bertie has saved Dora from the elk!"

In swift, excited sentences, broken with maternal emotion, she gave
supplementary information as to how the treacherous animal had ambushed
Dora as she was hunting for a strayed golf ball, and how Bertie had
dashed to her rescue with a stable fork and driven the beast off in the
nick of time.

"It was touch and go! She threw her niblick at it, but that didn't stop
it. In another moment she would have been crushed beneath its hoofs,"
panted Mrs. Yonelet.

"The animal is not safe," said Teresa, handing her agitated guest a cup
of tea. "I forget if you take sugar. I suppose the solitary life it
leads has soured its temper. There are muffins in the grate. It's not
my fault; I've tried to get it a mate for ever so long. You don't know
of anyone with a lady elk for sale or exchange, do you?" she asked the
company generally.

But Mrs. Yonelet was in no humour to listen to talk of elk marriages. The
mating of two human beings was the subject uppermost in her mind, and the
opportunity for advancing her pet project was too valuable to be
neglected.

"Teresa," she exclaimed impressively, "after those two young people have
been thrown together so dramatically, nothing can be quite the same again
between them. Bertie has done more than save Dora's life; he has earned
her affection. One cannot help feeling that Fate has consecrated them
for one another."

"Exactly what the vicar's wife said when Bertie saved Sybil from the elk
a year or two ago," observed Teresa placidly; "I pointed out to her that
he had rescued Mirabel Hicks from the same predicement a few months
previously, and that priority really belonged to the gardener's boy, who
had been rescued in the January of that year. There is a good deal of
sameness in country life, you know."

"It seems to be a very dangerous animal," said one of the guests.

"That's what the mother of the gardener's boy said," remarked Teresa;
"she wanted me to have it destroyed, but I pointed out to her that she
had eleven children and I had only one elk. I also gave her a black silk
skirt; she said that though there hadn't been a funeral in her family she
felt as if there had been. Anyhow, we parted friends. I can't offer you
a silk skirt, Emily, but you may have another cup