eap over the
bench and make a grab at me, I gathered that his mind was not on haggis.

"However," I said, leaping over the bench in my turn, "that is a side
issue. If, to come back to it, you were in those bushes and heard what I
was saying about you----"

He began to move round the bench in a nor'-nor'-easterly direction. I
followed his example, setting a course sou'-sou'-west.

"No doubt you were surprised at the way I was talking."

"Not a bit."

"What? Did nothing strike you as odd in the tone of my remarks?"

"It was just the sort of stuff I should have expected a treacherous,
sneaking hound like you to say."

"My dear chap," I protested, "this is not your usual form. A bit slow in
the uptake, surely? I should have thought you would have spotted right
away that it was all part of a well-laid plan."

"I'll get you in a jiffy," said Tuppy, recovering his balance after a
swift clutch at my neck. And so probable did this seem that I delayed no
longer, but hastened to place all the facts before him.

Speaking rapidly and keeping moving, I related my emotions on receipt of
Aunt Dahlia's telegram, my instant rush to the scene of the disaster, my
meditations in the car, and the eventual framing of this well-laid plan
of mine. I spoke clearly and well, and it was with considerable concern,
consequently, that I heard him observe--between clenched teeth, which
made it worse--that he didn't believe a damned word of it.

"But, Tuppy," I said, "why not? To me the thing rings true to the last
drop. What makes you sceptical? Confide in me, Tuppy."

He halted and stood taking a breather. Tuppy, pungently though Angela
might have argued to the contrary, isn't really fat. During the winter
months you will find him constantly booting the football with merry
shouts, and in the summer the tennis racket is seldom out of his hand.

But at the recently concluded evening meal, feeling, no doubt, that after
that painful scene in the larder there was nothing to be gained by
further abstinence, he had rather let himself go and, as it were, made up
leeway; and after really immersing himself in one of Anatole's dinners, a
man of his sturdy build tends to lose elasticity a bit. During the
exposition of my plans for his happiness a certain animation had crept
into this round-and-round-the mulberry-bush jamboree of ours--so much so,
indeed, that for the last few minutes we might have been a rather
oversized greyhound and a somewhat sli