ul
friends."

"You must get another, Mrs. Jowett," her hostess told her bracingly.
"Get a dear little toy Pekinese or one of those Japanese
what-do-you-call-'ems that you can carry in your arms: they are so
smart."

"If you do, Janetta," her husband warned her, "you must choose between
the brute and me. I refuse to live in the same house with one of those
pampered, trifling little beasts. If we decide to fill old Rover's
place I suggest that we get a rough-haired Irish terrier." He rolled the
"r's" round his tongue. "Something robust that can bark and chase cats,
and not lie all day on a cushion, like one of those dashed Chinese ..."
His voice died away in muttered thunder.

Again Mrs. Duff-Whalley reared her head, but Muriel interposed,
laughing. "You mustn't really be so severe, Mr. Jowett. I happen to
possess two of the 'trifling beasts,' and you must come and apologise to
them after dinner. You can't imagine more perfect darlings, and of
_course_ they are called Bing and Toutou. You won't be able to resist
their little sweet faces--too utterly darling!"

"Shan't I?" said Mr. Jowett doubtfully. "Well, I apologise. Nobody likes
to hear their dog miscalled.... By the way, Jackson, that's an
abominable brute of yours. Bit three milk-girls and devastated the
Scotts' hen-house last week, I hear."

"Yes," said Mr. Jackson. "Four murdered fowls they brought to me, and I
had to pay for them; and they didn't give me the corpses, which I felt
was too bad."

"What?" said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, deeply interested. "Did you actually pay
for the damage done and let them keep the fowls?"

"I did," Mr. Jackson owned gloomily, and the topic lasted until the
fruit was handed round.

"I wonder," said Mrs. Jowett to her hostess, as she peeled a pear, "if
you have met a newcomer in Priorsford--Miss Reston? She has taken Miss
Bathgate's rooms."

"You mean the Honourable Pamela Reston? She is a daughter of the late
Lord Bidborough of Bidborough Manor, Surrey, and Mintern Abbas,
Oxfordshire, and sister of the present peer: I looked her up in Debrett.
I called on her, feeling it my duty to be civil to a stranger, but it
seems to me a very odd thing that a peer's daughter would care to live
in such a humble way. Mark my words, there's something shady about it.
As likely as not, she's an absconding lady's-maid--but a call commits
one to nothing. She was out anyway, so I didn't see her."

"Oh, indeed," said Mrs. Jowett, blushing pink,