me underfoot, my boy. I'm a pestilent survivor of the feudal
system, aren't I, Nona?"

"Absolutely. So, Marko, don't be a completer noodle than you already
are."

"Ah, you're getting it now." Lord Tybar murmured. "I'm a noodle, too,
the _Searchlight_ says."

He somehow gave Sabre the impression of taking an even deeper enjoyment
in the incident between his wife and Sabre than the enjoyment he clearly
had in his own facetiousness. He was slightly turned in his saddle so as
to look directly at Nona, and he listened and interposed, and turned his
eyes from her face to Sabre's, and from Sabre's back to hers, with his
handsome head slightly cocked to one side and with much gleaming in his
eyes; rather as if he had on some private mock.

Fantastical notion! What mock could he have?

"Well, about my word 'elegant'," Nona was going on, "and why it is
mine--weren't you asking?"

Sabre said he had. "Yes, why yours?"

"Why, you see, Derry and Toms is a case of it." She tickled her horse's
ears with her riding switch, and he stamped a hoof on the ground and
arched his neck as though he knew he was a case of it and was proud of
being a case of it. "I wanted an elegant name for him and I always think
two names are so elegant for a firm--"

"Bloodsucker and Noodle are mine," said Lord Tybar in a very gloomy
voice; and they laughed.

"--So I called him Derry and Toms."

Sabre pointed out that this still left her own possession of the word
unexplained.

"Oh, Marko, you're dreadfully matter-of-fact. You always were. Why, Tony
and I get fond of a word and then we have it for our own, whichever of
us it is, and use it for everything. And elegant's mine just now. I'm
dreadfully fond of it. It's so--well, elegant: there you are, you see!"

Lord Tybar announced that he had just become attached to a new word and
desired to possess it. He was going to have blood. "You see, if I live
by sucking blood--"

"Tony, you're disgusting!"

"I know. I'm the most frightful things. I'm just beginning to realise
it. Yes, blood's mine, Nona. Copyright. All rights reserved. Blood."

"Well, so long as you stick to the noun and don't use the adjective,"
she said; and they all laughed again.

Lord Tybar gathered up his reins and stroked his left hand along them.
"Well, kindness to animals!" he said. "That's another of my beautiful
qualities. The perfect understanding between me and my horses tells me
the mare has seen enough of you, Sabre.