ep him; he'll have his little day, and
then, if you go on keeping him, he'll come down at last to a few
shillingsworth of hoofs and hide, just at a time, perhaps, when my bull
is being bought for a big sum for some important picture gallery."

It was too much. The united force of truth and slander and insult put
over heavy a strain on Tom Yorkfield's powers of restraint. In his right
hand he held a useful oak cudgel, with his left he made a grab at the
loose collar of Laurence's canary-coloured silk shirt. Laurence was not
a fighting man; the fear of physical violence threw him off his balance
as completely as overmastering indignation had thrown Tom off his, and
thus it came to pass that Clover Fairy was regaled with the unprecedented
sight of a human being scudding and squawking across the enclosure, like
the hen that would persist in trying to establish a nesting-place in the
manger. In another crowded happy moment the bull was trying to jerk
Laurence over his left shoulder, to prod him in the ribs while still in
the air, and to kneel on him when he reached the ground. It was only the
vigorous intervention of Tom that induced him to relinquish the last item
of his programme.

Tom devotedly and ungrudgingly nursed his half brother to a complete
recovery from his injuries, which consisted of nothing more serious than
a dislocated shoulder, a broken rib or two, and a little nervous
prostration. After all, there was no further occasion for rancour in the
young farmer's mind; Laurence's bull might sell for three hundred, or for
six hundred, and be admired by thousands in some big picture gallery, but
it would never toss a man over one shoulder and catch him a jab in the
ribs before he had fallen on the other side. That was Clover Fairy's
noteworthy achievement, which could never be taken away from him.

Laurence continues to be popular as an animal artist, but his subjects
are always kittens or fawns or lambkins--never bulls.

MORLVERA

The Olympic Toy Emporium occupied a conspicuous frontage in an important
West End street. It was happily named Toy Emporium, because one would
never have dreamed of according it the familiar and yet pulse-quickening
name of toyshop. There was an air of cold splendour and elaborate
failure about the wares that were set out in its ample windows; they were
the sort of toys that a tired shop-assistant displays and explains at
Christmas time to exclamatory parents and bored