sinner.

"You should have poured it through that sieve affair," said Vane.
"Your own manners as a hostess are not all they might be. However,
Binks and I are prepared to overlook it for once, and so we will pass
on to the thirdly. . . ."

He handed her the cigarette box, and with a faint smile hovering round
her lips, she looked up at him.

"Is your thirdly safe?" she asked.

"Mrs. Green thought it wonderful. A suitable climax to a dramatic
situation."

"You've had a rehearsal, have you?"

"Just a preliminary canter to see I hadn't forgotten anything."

"And she approved?"

"She suggested an alternative that, I am rather inclined to think,
might be better," he answered. "It's certainly simpler. . . ."

Again she smiled faintly. "I'm not certain that Mrs. Green's simpler
alternative strikes me as being much safer than your thirdly," she
murmured. "Incidentally, am I failing again in my obvious duties? It
seems to me that Binks sort of expects something. . . ." Another
fusillade of tail thumps greeted the end of the sentence.

"Great Scott!" cried Vane, "I should rather think you were. However, I
don't think you could very well have known; it's outside the usual
etiquette book." He handed her the indiarubber dog. "A feint towards
the window, one towards the door--and then throw."

A quivering, ecstatic body, a short, staccato bark--and Binks had
caught his enemy. He bit once; he bit again--and then, a little
puzzled, he dropped it. Impossible to conceive that it was really dead
at last--and yet, it no longer hooted. Binks looked up at his master
for information on the subject, and Vane scratched his head.

"That sure is the devil, old son," he remarked. "Have you killed it
for keeps. Bring it here. . . ." Binks laid it obediently at Vane's
feet. "It should squeak," he explained to Joan as he picked it up,
"mournfully and hideously."

She came and stood beside him and together they regarded it gravely,
while Binks, in a state of feverish anticipation, looked from one to
the other.

"Get on with it," he tail-wagged at them furiously; "get on with it,
for Heaven's sake! Don't stand there looking at one another. . . ."

"I think," his master was speaking in a voice that shook, "I think the
metal squeak has fallen inside the animal's tummy. . . ."

"You ought to have been a vet," answered the girl, and her voice was
very low. "Give it to me; my finger is smaller."

She took the toy fro