of him." Moreover, he would
have stood more at ease if the whole of Therford had not been overrun
with dogs. He scorned to complain, and I knew him too well to do so
for him; but it was a strain on his self-command to have them all
smelling about his legs, and wanting to mumble the lion skin,
especially Hippo's great bloodhound, Kirby, as big as a calf, who did
once make him start by thrusting his long cold nose into his hand.
Hippo laughed, but Harold could do nothing but force out a smile.

And I always saw the disgusted and bored expression most prominently in
her performance, which at the best could never have given the grandeur
of the pose she made him take, with the lion skin over his shoulder,
and the arrows and bow in his hand. He muttered that a rifle would be
more rational, and that he could hold it better, but withdrew the
protest when he found that Hippo was ready to implore him to teach her
to shoot with pistol, rifle--anything.

"Your brother can show you. You've only to fire at a mark," was all
that could be got out of him.

Nor would he be entrapped into a beneficent talk. His great talent for
silence served him well, and though I told him afterwards that he had
not done Hippo justice--for she honestly wanted an opening for being
useful--he was not mollified. "I don't like tongue," was all he
further said of her.

But whatever Hippo was, or whatever she did, I shall always be grateful
to her for that photograph.

CHAPTER X.

DERMOT'S MARE.

All this time Dermot Tracy had been from home. He had not come back
after the season, but had been staying with friends and going to
various races, in which, as usual, he had heavy stakes. He persuaded
my two nephews to meet him at Doncaster, where he ran one of the horses
bred on his Irish estate, and afterwards to go and make him a visit at
Killy Marey, County Kildare, where he used to stay about once a year,
shooting or hunting, as the season might be, and always looking after
his horses and entertaining all the squires and squireens of the
neighbourhood, and many of the officers from the Curragh. The benefit
of those visits was very doubtful both as to morals and purses, and
Lord Erymanth pointedly said he was sorry when he heard that Harold and
Eustace were of the party.

I do not know whether Lady Diana viewed them as bad companions for her
son, or her son as a bad companion for them; but she was very severe
about it, and when I thou