on was. The sound of
Russell's Hound sneezing in the hall was like a bomb.

But at the present moment Kew only sang a few bars of Beethoven in a
small voice. He was rather sad, because of Jay. He had not realised
till he came home how very thoroughly Jay had disappeared. He led
the conversation to Jay. It often happened that Kew led conversations,
because conversations, like the public, generally follow the loudest
voice.

"Why so sudden?" asked Kew, apparently of the Round Pond, so loud was his
voice. "That's what I can't make out. She used to be such a human sort,
and anybody with half an ear could hear the decisions bubbling about
under the lid for weeks before they boiled over."

Everybody--even Cousin Gustus--knew that he was talking of Jay. Kew said
so much that he might be excused for forgetting occasionally what he had
not said. Besides, he had talked of little else but Jay since he rejoined
his Family two days before.

"She used to be a good girl," sighed Cousin Gustus. "So few girls
are good."

Cousin Gustus is an expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends
are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is
immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you
were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and
died of pneumonia contracted during the flight, you would not surprise
Cousin Gustus. He is never at a loss for a precedent. The only way you
could really astonish him would be by living a blameless life without
adventure, and dying of old age in your bed.

"There were warnings," said Anonyma. "Little disagreements with Gustus."

"She wanted to bring vermin into the house," mourned Cousin Gustus.

Kew suggested: "White mice?"

"Not vermin unattended," Anonyma explained. "She wanted to adopt Brown
Borough babies. She had been working desultorily in the Brown Borough
since War broke out."

"That might explain the peculiar and un-Jay-like remark in her letter to
you--that she would settle in no home except the Perfect Home. I hate
things in capital letters."

"Why didn't she get married?" grumbled Cousin Gustus. "She was engaged
for nearly three weeks to young William Morgan, a most respectable young
man. So few young men--"

"She wrote to me that she couldn't keep up that engagement," said Kew.
"Not even by looking upon it as War Work. She called him a 'Surface young
man,' and that again seemed unlike her. She usen't to mind s