not bad-looking, with keen dark eyes,
black whiskers, and the mobile forensic mouth which can express every
shade of feeling, from deferential assent to cynical incredulity;
possessed, too, of an endless flow of conversation that was decidedly
agreeable, if a trifling too laboriously so, he had been a dangerous
rival. But all that was over now; he saw it himself at once, and during
dinner sank into dismal silence, gazing pathetically at Lilian, and
sighing almost obtrusively between the courses. His stream of small talk
seemed to have been cut off at the main.

"You've done a kind thing, Weatherhead," said the colonel. "I can't tell
you all that dog is to me, and how I missed the poor beast. I'd quite
given up all hope of ever seeing him again, and all the time there was
Weatherhead, Mr. Travers, quietly searching all London till he found
him! I sha'n't forget it. It shows a really kind feeling."

I saw by Travers's face that he was telling himself he would have found
fifty Bingos in half the time--if he had only thought of it; he smiled
a melancholy assent to all the colonel said, and then began to study me
with an obviously depreciatory air.

"You can't think," I heard Mrs. Currie telling my mother, "how really
_touching_ it was to see poor Bingo's emotion at seeing all the old
familiar objects again! He went up and sniffed at them all in turn,
quite plainly recognising everything. And he was quite put out to find
that we had moved his favourite ottoman out of the drawing-room. But he
_is_ so penitent too, and so ashamed of having run away; he kept under a
chair in the hall all the morning; he wouldn't come in here, either, so
we had to leave him in your garden."

"He's been sadly out of spirits all day," said Lilian; "he hasn't bitten
one of the tradespeople."

"Oh, _he's_ all right, the rascal!" said the colonel, cheerily. "He'll
be after the cats again as well as ever in a day or two."

"Ah, those cats!" said my poor innocent mother. "Algy, you haven't tried
the air-gun on them again lately, have you? They're worse than ever."

I troubled the colonel to pass the claret. Travers laughed for the first
time. "That's a good idea," he said, in that carrying "bar-mess" voice
of his; "an air-gun for cats, ha, ha! Make good bags, eh, Weatherhead?"
I said that I did, _very_ good bags, and felt I was getting painfully
red in the face.

"Oh, Algy is an excellent shot--quite a sportsman," said my mother. "I
remember,