p from the floor, walked
quickly through the open window into the garden.

For a moment no one stirred--and then Mr. Tosswill, who had been sitting
rather apart from the rest of the party, got up and shut the window.

"What a curious thing," he said musingly. "I have always regarded Flick
as one of the best tempered of dogs. This is the first time he has ever
behaved like this."

Mrs. Crofton dragged herself up from her comfortable seat. Her face
looked white and pinched. In spite of her real effort to control herself,
there were tears in her eyes and her lips were trembling. "If you are on
the telephone," she said appealingly, "I should be so grateful if you
should send for a fly. I don't feel well enough to walk home." She tried
to smile. "My nerves have been upset for some time past."

Janet felt vexed and concerned. "Jack will drive you home in our old pony
cart," she said soothingly. "Will you go and bring it round, Tom?"

Tom slipped off, and there arose a babel of voices, everyone saying how
sorry they were, Dolly especially, explaining eagerly how she herself had
personally superintended the shutting up of the dog. As for Betty, she
went off into the hall and quietly fetched Mrs. Crofton's charming
evening cloak and becoming little hood. As she did so she told herself
again that Mrs. Crofton must be much better off than they had thought
her to be from her letter. Every woman, even the least sophisticated,
knows what really beautiful and becoming clothes cost nowadays, and Mrs.
Crofton's clothes were eminently beautiful and becoming.

As Betty went back into the drawing-room, she heard the visitor say:--"I
was born with a kind of horror of dogs, and I'm afraid that in some
uncanny way they always know it! It's such bad luck, for most nice people
and all the people I myself have cared for in my life, have been dog
lovers."

And at that Dolly, who had a most unfortunate habit of blurting out just
those things which, even if people are thinking of, they mostly leave
unsaid, exclaimed:--"Your husband bred terriers, didn't he? Flick came
from him."

Mrs. Crofton made no answer to this, and Janet, who was looking at her,
saw her face alter. A curious expression of--was it pain?--it looked more
like fear,--came over it. It was clear that Dolly's thoughtless words had
hurt her.

Suddenly there came the sound of a tap on the pane of one of the windows,
and Mrs. Crofton, whose nerves were evidently very much out