rying persuasion, 'with a curly tail and red eyes, and
breathing real smoke and fire?'

Harold wavered an instant: Pall-Mall was still strong in him. The next
he was grovelling on the floor. No saurian ever swung a tail so scaly
and so curly as his. Clubland was a thousand years away. With horrific
pants he emitted smokiest smoke and fiercest fire.

'Now I want a Princess,' cried Edward, clutching Charlotte ecstatically;
'and _you_ can be the Doctor, and heal me from the dragon's deadly
wound.'

Of all professions I held the sacred art of healing in worst horror and
contempt. Cataclysmal memories of purge and draught crowded thick on me,
and with Charlotte--who courted no barren honours--I made a break for
the door. Edward did likewise, and the hostile forces clashed together
on the mat, and for a brief space things were mixed and chaotic and
Arthurian. The silvery sound of the luncheon-bell restored an instant
peace, even in the teeth of clenched antagonisms like ours. The Holy
Grail itself, 'sliding athwart a sunbeam,' never so effectually stilled
a riot of warring passions into sweet and quiet accord.

[Illustration]

WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT

EDWARD was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as the one
that had last passed under the dentist's hands, to be the capitalist of
the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual tariff
obtained in ours: half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if the molar
were a loose one. This one, unfortunately--in spite of Edward's
interested affectation of agony--had been shakiness undisguised; but the
event was good enough to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however,
Edward had claimed exemption from any servile duties of procurement, and
had swaggered about the garden while I fetched from the village
post-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Our
preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest and
most self-respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace the
feast, and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciest
plantains; while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in her
affected feminine way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing for
bits of broken cork.

'Hurry up, can't you?' growled our host; 'what are you girls always so
beastly particular for?'

'Martha says,' explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), 'that if
you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swe