feminine eye.

"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air,
observing that he did not touch it.

"Sometimes," said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the
hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, to-night he
asked a boon.

"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be
supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other
empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every
evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up:
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."

Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one
day she made a further journey of inspection.

"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked. "I believe
it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared away."

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till
she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the
shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin
had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the
dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner
of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the
Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred
hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw
bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in
her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for
the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He
knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he
loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener
would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown
ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as
she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her
pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing
would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right.
And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and
defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for