seemed deeply conscious of
his position.

I must say Aunt Dahlia's bearing and demeanour did nothing to assist
toward a restored composure. Of the amiability which she had exhibited
when discussing this unhappy chump's activities with me over the fruit
salad, no trace remained, and I was not surprised that speech more or
less froze on the Fink-Nottle lips. It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia,
normally as genial a bird as ever encouraged a gaggle of hounds to get
their noses down to it, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does,
strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.

"Well?" she said.

In answer to this, all that Gussie could produce was a sort of strangled
hiccough.

"Well?"

Aunt Dahlia's face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a
period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish
tinge to the patient's complexion, and her best friends could not have
denied that even at normal times the relative's map tended a little
toward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so
pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for
self-expression.

"Well?"

Gussie tried hard. And for a moment it seemed as if something was going
to come through. But in the end it turned out nothing more than a sort of
death-rattle.

"Oh, take him away, Bertie, and put ice on his head," said Aunt Dahlia,
giving the thing up. And she turned to tackle what looked like the rather
man's size job of soothing Anatole, who was now carrying on a muttered
conversation with himself in a rapid sort of way.

Seeming to feel that the situation was one to which he could not do
justice in Bingo-cum-Maloney Anglo-American, he had fallen back on his
native tongue. Words like "_marmiton de Domange," "pignouf,"
"hurluberlu_" and "_roustisseur_" were fluttering from him like bats out
of a barn. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at the
Gallic language during that Cannes visit, I'm still more or less in the
Esker-vous-avez stage. I regretted this, for they sounded good.

I assisted Gussie down the stairs. A cooler thinker than Aunt Dahlia, I
had already guessed the hidden springs and motives which had led him to
the roof. Where she had seen only a cockeyed reveller indulging himself
in a drunken prank or whimsy, I had spotted the hunted fawn.

"Was Tuppy after you?" I asked sympathetically.

What I believe is called a _frisson_ shook him.

"He nea