aw nothing. At last a stot
happened to come wandering along; and she said, quite savagely, 'I'm
going to hook something!' You don't know what a stot is?--it's a young
bullock. So she deliberately walked to within twenty yards or so of the
animal, threw the line so that it just dropped across its neck, and the
fly caught in the thick hair. You should have seen the gay performance
that followed! The beast shook its head and shook its head--for it could
feel the line, if it couldn't feel the fly; and then, getting alarmed,
it started off up the hill, with the reel squealing just as if a salmon
were on, and Honnor running after him as hard as she could over the
bracken and heather. If it were rage made her hook the stot, she was
laughing now--laughing so that when the beast stopped she could hardly
reel in the line. And old Robert--I thought he would have had a fit.
'Will I gaff him now, Miss Honnor?' he cried, as he came running along.
But the stot didn't mean to be gaffed. Off it set again; and Honnor
after it, until at last it caught the line in a birch-bush and broke it;
then, just as if nothing had happened, it began to graze, as usual. You
should have seen the game that began then--old Robert and Honnor trying
to get hold of the stot, so as to take the casting-line and the fly from
its mane--it isn't a mane, but you know--and the stot trying to butt
them whenever they came near. The end of it was that the beast shook
off the fly for itself, and old Robert found it; but I wonder whether it
were real rage that made Honnor Cunyngham hook the stot--"

"Of course not!" he said. "It was a mere piece of fun."

"It isn't fun when Lady Rosamund comes down-stairs in a bad
temper--after you gentlemen have left," remarked Miss Georgie,
significantly; and then she prattled away in this careful undertone.
"What horrid stuff that fantasia is; don't you think so? A mixture of
Wagner, and Chopin, and 'Home, Sweet Home.' Lady Adela has put you in
her novel. Oh, yes, she has; she showed me the last pages this morning.
You remember the young married English lady who is a great
poetess?--well, she is rescued from drowning in the Bay of Syracuse by a
young Greek sailor, and you are the Greek sailor. You'll be flattered by
her description of you. You are entirely Greek and godlike--what is that
bust?--Alcibiades?--no, no, he was a general, wasn't he?--Alcinous, is
it?--or Antinous?--never mind, the bust you see so often in Florence and
Rom