two exchanged their private confidences, leaving Harold to
his exploration alone.

"Here's something with sharp corners," said Harold, presently. "Must be
Leotard, I think. Better let HIM go."

"Oh, yes, we can't save Leotard," assented Charlotte, limply.

Poor old Leotard! I said nothing, of course; I was not on in this piece.
But, surely, had Leotard heard and rightly understood all that was going
on above him, he must have sent up one feeble, strangled cry, one faint
appeal to be rescued from unfamiliar little Annies and retained for an
audience certain to appreciate and never unduly critical.

"Now I've got to the Noah's Ark," panted Harold, still groping blindly.

"Try and shove the lid back a bit," said Charlotte, "and pull out a dove
or a zebra or a giraffe if there's one handy."

Harold toiled on with grunts and contortions, and presently produced in
triumph a small grey elephant and a large beetle with a red stomach.

"They're jammed in too tight," he complained. "Can't get any more out.
But as I came up I'm sure I felt Potiphar!" And down he dived again.

Potiphar was a finely modelled bull with a suede skin, rough and
comfortable and warm in bed. He was my own special joy and pride, and I
thrilled with honest emotion when Potiphar emerged to light once more,
stout-necked and stalwart as ever.

"That'll have to do," said Charlotte, getting up. "We dursn't take any
more, 'cos we'll be found out if we do. Make the box all right, and
bring 'em along."

Harold rammed down the wads of paper and twists of straw he had
disturbed, replaced the lid squarely and innocently, and picked up his
small salvage; and we sneaked off for the window most generally in use
for prison-breakings and nocturnal escapades. A few seconds later and we
were hurrying silently in single file along the dark edge of the lawn.

Oh, the riot, the clamour, the crowding chorus, of all silent things
that spoke by scent and colour and budding thrust and foison, that
moonlit night of June! Under the laurel-shade all was still ghostly
enough, brigand-haunted, crackling, whispering of night and all its
possibilities of terror. But the open garden, when once we were in
it--how it turned a glad new face to welcome us, glad as of old when
the sunlight raked and searched it, new with the unfamiliar night-aspect
that yet welcomed us as guests to a hall where the horns blew up to a
new, strange banquet! Was this the same grass, could these be the