waving her wet
handkerchief.

'I've just got to look in at a house near here for a minute to inquire
about a dog,' I said, 'and then we will go home.'

'I used to know this part of the world,' he replied, and said no more
till Leggatt shot past the lodge at the Sichliffes's gate. Then I
heard him gasp.

Miss Sichliffe, in a green waterproof, an orange jersey, and a pinkish
leather hat, was working on a bulb-border. She straightened herself as
the car stopped, and breathed hard. Shend got out and walked towards
her. They shook hands, turned round together, and went into the house.
Then the dog Harvey pranced out corkily from under the lee of a bench.
Malachi, with one joyous swoop, fell on him as an enemy and an equal.
Harvey, for his part, freed from all burden whatsoever except the
obvious duty of a man-dog on his own ground, met Malachi without reserve
or remorse, and with six months' additional growth to come and go on.

'Don't check 'em!' cried Leggatt, dancing round the flurry. 'They've
both been saving up for each other all this time. It'll do 'em worlds
of good.'

'Leggatt,' I said, 'will you take Mr. Shend's bag and suitcase up to the
house and put them down just inside the door? Then we will go on.'

So I enjoyed the finish alone. It was a dead heat, and they licked each
other's jaws in amity till Harvey, one imploring eye on me, leaped into
the front seat, and Malachi backed his appeal. It was theft, but I took
him, and we talked all the way home of r-rats and r-rabbits and bones
and baths and the other basic facts of life. That evening after dinner
they slept before the fire, with their warm chins across the hollows of
my ankles--to each chin an ankle--till I kicked them upstairs to bed.

* * * * *

I was not at Mittleham when she came over to announce her engagement,
but I heard of it when Mrs. Godfrey and Attley came, forty miles an
hour, over to me, and Mrs. Godfrey called me names of the worst for
suppression of information.

'As long as it wasn't me, I don't care,' said Attley.

'I believe you knew it all along,' Mrs. Godfrey repeated. 'Else what
made you drive that man literally into her arms?'

'To ask after the dog Harvey,' I replied.

'Then, what's the beast doing here?' Attley demanded, for Malachi and
the dog Harvey were deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who
was being out-argued.

'Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself _de trop_ where he was,