did Mr. Scrymgeour fire you?"

Ginger Kemp's face darkened. He frowned. Sally, watching him, felt that
she had been right when she had guessed that he had a temper. She liked
him none the worse for it. Mild men did not appeal to her.

"I don't know if you're fond of dogs?" said Ginger.

"I used to be before this morning," said Sally. "And I suppose I shall
be again in time. For the moment I've had what you might call rather a
surfeit of dogs. But aren't you straying from the point? I asked you why
Mr. Scrymgeour dismissed you."

"I'm telling you."

"I'm glad of that. I didn't know."

"The old brute," said Ginger, frowning again, "has a dog. A very jolly
little spaniel. Great pal of mine. And Scrymgeour is the sort of fool
who oughtn't to be allowed to own a dog. He's one of those asses who
isn't fit to own a dog. As a matter of fact, of all the blighted,
pompous, bullying, shrivelled-souled old devils..."

"One moment," said Sally. "I'm getting an impression that you don't like
Mr. Scrymgeour. Am I right?"

"Yes!"

"I thought so. Womanly intuition! Go on."

"He used to insist on the poor animal doing tricks. I hate seeing a
dog do tricks. Dogs loathe it, you know. They're frightfully sensitive.
Well, Scrymgeour used to make this spaniel of his do tricks--fool-things
that no self-respecting dogs would do: and eventually poor old Billy got
fed up and jibbed. He was too polite to bite, but he sort of shook his
head and crawled under a chair. You'd have thought anyone would have
let it go at that, but would old Scrymgeour? Not a bit of it! Of all the
poisonous..."

"Yes, I know. Go on."

"Well, the thing ended in the blighter hauling him out from under the
chair and getting more and more shirty, until finally he laid into him
with a stick. That is to say," said Ginger, coldly accurate, "he started
laying into him with a stick." He brooded for a moment with knit brows.
"A spaniel, mind you! Can you imagine anyone beating a spaniel? It's
like hitting a little girl. Well, he's a fairly oldish man, you know,
and that hampered me a bit: but I got hold of the stick and broke it
into about eleven pieces, and by great good luck it was a stick he
happened to value rather highly. It had a gold knob and had been
presented to him by his constituents or something. I minced it up
a goodish bit, and then I told him a fair amount about himself. And
then--well, after that he shot me out, and I came here."

Sally did not spe