The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his
time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before
taking anything else.

The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and
untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was
sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a
yachting cap that no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely
heart. He knew by the light in the third-story front windows, and by
the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come
home, and would soon extinguish his light and retire. For it was
September of the year and of the soul, in which season the house's
good man comes to consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities,
and to desire the return of his mate and the more durable blessings of
decorum and the moral excellencies.

The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match
illuminated his salient points for a moment. He belonged to the third
type of burglars.

This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police
have made us familiar with the first and second. Their classification
is simple. The collar is the distinguishing mark.

When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described as
a degenerate of the lowest type, singularly vicious and depraved, and
is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs
out of Patrolman Hennessy's pocket in 1878 and walked away to escape
arrest.

The other well-known type is the burglar who wears a collar. He is
always referred to as a Raffles in real life. He is invariably a
gentleman by daylight, breakfasting in a dress suit, and posing as a
paperhanger, while after dark he plies his nefarious occupation of
burglary. His mother is an extremely wealthy and respected resident
of Ocean Grove, and when he is conducted to his cell he asks at once
for a nail file and the _Police Gazette_. He always has a wife in
every State in the Union and fiancées in all the Territories, and the
newspapers print his matrimonial gallery out of their stock of cuts of
the ladies who were cured by only one bottle after having been given
up by five doctors, experiencing great relief after the first dose.

The burglar wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of
the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The police would have been baffled
had they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the
respectable, unassuming burglar who is neither above nor below his
station.

This burglar of the third class began to prowl. He wore no masks,
dark lanterns, or gum shoes. He carried a 38-calibre revolver in his
pocket, and he chewed peppermint gum thoughtfully.

The furniture of the house was swathed in its summer dust protectors.
The silver was far away in safe-deposit vaults. The burglar expected
no remarkable "haul." His objective point was that dimly lighted
room where the master of the house should be sleeping heavily
after whatever solace he had sought to lighten the burden of
his loneliness. A "touch" might be made there to the extent of
legitimate, fair professional profits--loose money, a watch, a
jewelled stick-pin--nothing exorbitant or beyond reason. He had seen
the window left open and had taken the chance.

The burglar softly opened the door of the lighted room. The gas was
turned low. A man lay in the bed asleep. On the dresser lay many
things in confusion--a crumpled roll of bills, a watch, keys, three
poker chips, crushed cigars, a pink silk hair bow, and an unopened
bottle of bromo-seltzer for a bulwark in the morning.

The burglar took three steps toward the dresser. The man in the bed
suddenly uttered a squeaky groan and opened his eyes. His right hand
slid under his pillow, but remained there.

"Lay still," said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the
third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end
of the burglar's pistol and lay still.

"Now hold up both your hands," commanded the burglar.

The citizen had a little, pointed, brown-and-gray beard, like that
of a painless dentist. He looked solid, esteemed, irritable, and
disgusted. He sat up in bed and raised his right hand above his head.

"Up with the other one," ordered the burglar. "You might be amphibious
and shoot with your left. You can count two, can't you? Hurry up,
now."

"Can't raise the other one," said the citizen, with a contortion of
his lineaments.

"What's the matter with it?"

"Rheumatism in the shoulder."

"Inflammatory?"

"Was. The inflammation has gone down." The burglar stood for a moment
or two, holding his gun on the afflicted one. He glanced at the
plunder on the dresser and then, with a half-embarrassed air, back at
the man in the bed. Then he, too, made a sudden grimace.

"Don't stand there making faces," snapped the citizen, bad-humouredly.
"If you've come to burgle why don't you do it? There's some stuff
lying around."

"'Scuse me," said the burglar, with a grin; "but it just socked me
one, too. It's good for you that rheumatism and me happens to be old
pals. I got it in my left arm, too. Most anybody but me would have
popped you when you wouldn't hoist that left claw of yours."

"How long have you had it?" inquired the citizen.

"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for
a rheumatic life--that's my judgment."

"Ever try rattlesnake oil?" asked the citizen, interestedly.

"Gallons," said the burglar. "If all the snakes I've used the oil of
was strung out in a row they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and
the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."

"Some use Chiselum's Pills," remarked the citizen.

"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took 'em five months. No good. I had some
relief the year I tried Finkelham's Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices
and Potts's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried
in my pocket what done the trick."

"Is yours worse in the morning or at night?" asked the citizen.

"Night," said the burglar; "just when I'm busiest. Say, take down that
arm of yours--I guess you won't--Say! did you ever try Blickerstaff's
Blood Builder?"

"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"

The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his
crossed knee.

"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had
to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way
up. Tell you what--I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is
good for it."

"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief.
Yours swell any?"

"Of mornings. And when it's goin' to rain--great Christopher!"

"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the
size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And
if I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne' matinee going on,
the moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache."

"It's undiluted--hades!" said the burglar.

"You're dead right," said the citizen.

The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket
with an awkward attempt at ease.

"Say, old man," he said, constrainedly, "ever try opodeldoc?"

"Slop!" said the citizen angrily. "Might as well rub on restaurant
butter."

"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little
Minnie when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell you what! We're
up against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little
old sanitary, ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say--this job's
off--'scuse me--get on your clothes and let's go out and have some.
'Scuse the liberty, but--ouch! There she goes again!"

"For a week," said the citizen. "I haven't been able to dress myself
without help. I'm afraid Thomas is in bed, and--"

"Climb out," said the burglar, "I'll help you get into your duds."

The conventional returned as a tidal wave and flooded the citizen. He
stroked his brown-and-gray beard.

"It's very unusual--" he began.

"Here's your shirt," said the burglar, "fall out. I knew a man who
said Omberry's Ointment fixed him in two weeks so he could use both
hands in tying his four-in-hand."

As they were going out the door the citizen turned and started back.

"'Liked to forgot my money," he explained; "laid it on the dresser
last night."

The burglar caught him by the right sleeve.

"Come on," he said bluffly. "I ask you. Leave it alone. I've got the
price. Ever try witch hazel and oil of wintergreen?"

The hunting season had come to an end, and the Mullets had not succeeded
in selling the Brogue.  There had been a kind of tradition in the family
for the past three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the
Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was over; but seasons
came and went without anything happening to justify such ill-founded
optimism.  The animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of
its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on, in recognition
of the fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid
of.  The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood had been known to suggest
that the first letter of its name was superfluous.  The Brogue had been
variously described in sale catalogues as a light-weight hunter, a lady's
hack, and, more simply, but still with a touch of imagination, as a
useful brown gelding, standing 15.1.  Toby Mullet had ridden him for four
seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost any sort of horse with
the West Wessex as long as it is an animal that knows the country.  The
Brogue knew the country intimately, having personally created most of the
gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for many miles round.
His manners and characteristics were not ideal in the hunting field, but
he was probably rather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack on
country roads.  According to the Mullet family, he was not really road-
shy, but there were one or two objects of dislike that brought on sudden
attacks of what Toby called the swerving sickness.  Motors and cycles he
treated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows, piles of stones
by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted too
aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of
beehives, turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of the
zigzag course of forked lightning.  If a pheasant rose noisily from the
other side of a hedgerow the Brogue would spring into the air at the same
moment, but this may have been due to a desire to be companionable.  The
Mullet family contradicted the widely prevalent report that the horse was
a confirmed crib-biter.

It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet, relict of the late
Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Toby and a bunch of daughters, assailed
Clovis Sangrail on the outskirts of the village with a breathless
catalogue of local happenings.

"You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?" she vociferated; "awfully
rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall, middle-aged and rather quiet.  He's
taken the Red House on a long lease and spent a lot of money on
alterations and improvements.  Well, Toby's sold him the Brogue!"

Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the astonishing news; then
he broke out into unstinted congratulation.  If he had belonged to a more
emotional race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet.

"How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at last!  Now you can buy a
decent animal.  I've always said that Toby was clever.  Ever so many
congratulations."

"Don't congratulate me.  It's the most unfortunate thing that could have
happened!" said Mrs. Mullet dramatically.

Clovis stared at her in amazement.

"Mr. Penricarde," said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her voice to what she
imagined to be an impressive whisper, though it rather resembled a
hoarse, excited squeak, "Mr. Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions
to Jessie.  Slight at first, but now unmistakable.  I was a fool not to
have seen it sooner.  Yesterday, at the Rectory garden party, he asked
her what her favourite flowers were, and she told him carnations, and to-
day a whole stack of carnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and
lovely dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of chocolates
that he must have got on purpose from London.  And he's asked her to go
round the links with him to-morrow.  And now, just at this critical
moment, Toby has sold him that animal.  It's a calamity!"

"But you've been trying to get the horse off your hands for years," said
Clovis.

"I've got a houseful of daughters," said Mrs. Mullet, "and I've been
trying--well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or
two wouldn't be amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you
know."

"I don't know," said Clovis, "I've never counted, but I expect you're
right as to the number; mothers generally know these things."

"And now," continued Mrs. Mullet, in her tragic whisper, "when there's a
rich husband-in-prospect imminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him
that miserable animal.  It will probably kill him if he tries to ride it;
anyway it will kill any affection he might have felt towards any member
of our family.  What is to be done?  We can't very well ask to have the
horse back; you see, we praised it up like anything when we thought there
was a chance of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit
him."

"Couldn't you steal it out of his stable and send it to grass at some
farm miles away?" suggested Clovis; "write 'Votes for Women' on the
stable door, and the thing would pass for a Suffragette outrage.  No one
who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get it back
again."

"Every newspaper in the country would ring with the affair," said Mrs.
Mullet; "can't you imagine the headline, 'Valuable Hunter Stolen by
Suffragettes'?  The police would scour the countryside till they found
the animal."

"Well, Jessie must try and get it back from Penricarde on the plea that
it's an old favourite.  She can say it was only sold because the stable
had to be pulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease, and that
now it has been arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of
years longer."

"It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back when you've just
sold him," said Mrs. Mullet, "but something must be done, and done at
once.  The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as
quiet as a lamb.  After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if
they were demented, don't they?"

"The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for sedateness," agreed
Clovis.

Jessie came back from the golf links next day in a state of mingled
elation and concern.

"It's all right about the proposal," she announced; "he came out with it
at the sixth hole.  I said I must have time to think it over.  I accepted
him at the seventh."

"My dear," said her mother, "I think a little more maidenly reserve and
hesitation would have been advisable, as you've known him so short a
time.  You might have waited till the ninth hole."

"The seventh is a very long hole," said Jessie; "besides, the tension was
putting us both off our game.  By the time we'd got to the ninth hole
we'd settled lots of things.  The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica,
with perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, and a week in
London to wind up with.  Two of his nieces are to be asked to be
bridesmaids, so with our lot there will be seven, which is rather a lucky
number.  You are to wear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lace
jabbed into it.  By the way, he's coming over this evening to ask your
consent to the whole affair.  So far all's well, but about the Brogue
it's a different matter.  I told him the legend about the stable, and how
keen we were about buying the horse back, but he seems equally keen on
keeping it.  He said he must have horse exercise now that he's living in
the country, and he's going to start riding to-morrow.  He's ridden a few
times in the Row, on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians
and people undergoing rest cures, and that's about all his experience in
the saddle--oh, and he rode a pony once in Norfolk, when he was fifteen
and the pony twenty-four; and to-morrow he's going to ride the Brogue!  I
shall be a widow before I'm married, and I do so want to see what
Corsica's like; it looks so silly on the map."

Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments of the situation put
before him.

"Nobody can ride that animal with any safety," said Mrs. Mullet, "except
Toby, and he knows by long experience what it is going to shy at, and
manages to swerve at the same time."

"I did hint to Mr. Penricarde--to Vincent, I should say--that the Brogue
didn't like white gates," said Jessie.

"White gates!" exclaimed Mrs. Mullet; "did you mention what effect a pig
has on him?  He'll have to go past Lockyer's farm to get to the high
road, and there's sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane."

"He's taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately," said Toby.

"It's obvious that Penricarde mustn't be allowed to go out on that
animal," said Clovis, "at least not till Jessie has married him, and
tired of him.  I tell you what: ask him to a picnic to-morrow, starting
at an early hour; he's not the sort to go out for a ride before
breakfast.  The day after I'll get the rector to drive him over to
Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage hospital they're building
there.  The Brogue will be standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer
to exercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and
go conveniently lame.  If you hurry on the wedding a bit the lameness
fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely over."

Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and she kissed Clovis.

It was nobody's fault that the rain came down in torrents the next
morning, making a picnic a fantastic impossibility.  It was also nobody's
fault, but sheer ill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in
the afternoon to tempt Mr. Penricarde to make his first essay with the
Brogue.  They did not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer's farm; the
rectory gate was painted a dull unobtrusive green, but it had been white
a year or two ago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the
habit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this
particular point of the road.  Subsequently, there being apparently no
further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard,
where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to the orchard
found the coop almost intact, but very little left of the turkey.

Mr. Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, and suffering from a bruised
knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his
own inexperience with horses and country roads, and allowed Jessie to
nurse him back into complete recovery and golf-fitness within something
less than a week.

In the list of wedding presents which the local newspaper published a
fortnight or so later appeared the following item:

"Brown saddle-horse, 'The Brogue,' bridegroom's gift to bride."

"Which shows," said Toby Mullet, "that he knew nothing."

"Or else," said Clovis, "that he has a very pleasing wit."

"There is a back way on to the lawn," said Mrs. Philidore Stossen to her
daughter, "through a small grass paddock and then through a walled fruit
garden full of gooseberry bushes.  I went all over the place last year
when the family were away.  There is a door that opens from the fruit
garden into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle with
the guests as if we had come in by the ordinary way.  It's much safer
than going in by the front entrance and running the risk of coming bang
up against the hostess; that would be so awkward when she doesn't happen
to have invited us."

"Isn't it a lot of trouble to take for getting admittance to a garden
party?"

"To a garden party, yes; to _the_ garden party of the season, certainly
not.  Every one of any consequence in the county, with the exception of
ourselves, has been asked to meet the Princess, and it would be far more
troublesome to invent explanations as to why we weren't there than to get
in by a roundabout way.  I stopped Mrs. Cuvering in the road yesterday
and talked very pointedly about the Princess.  If she didn't choose to
take the hint and send me an invitation it's not my fault, is it?  Here
we are: we just cut across the grass and through that little gate into
the garden."

Mrs. Stossen and her daughter, suitably arrayed for a county garden party
function with an infusion of Almanack de Gotha, sailed through the narrow
grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state
barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream.  There
was a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the stateliness of
their advance, as though hostile search-lights might be turned on them at
any moment; and, as a matter of fact, they were not unobserved.  Matilda
Cuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old and the added
advantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medlar tree, had
enjoyed a good view of the Stossen flanking movement and had foreseen
exactly where it would break down in execution.

"They'll find the door locked, and they'll jolly well have to go back the
way they came," she remarked to herself.  "Serves them right for not
coming in by the proper entrance.  What a pity Tarquin Superbus isn't
loose in the paddock.  After all, as every one else is enjoying
themselves, I don't see why Tarquin shouldn't have an afternoon out."

Matilda was of an age when thought is action; she slid down from the
branches of the medlar tree, and when she clambered back again Tarquin,
the huge white Yorkshire boar-pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of his
stye for the wider range of the grass paddock.  The discomfited Stossen
expedition, returning in recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat from
the unyielding obstacle of the locked door, came to a sudden halt at the
gate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden.

"What a villainous-looking animal," exclaimed Mrs. Stossen; "it wasn't
there when we came in."

"It's there now, anyhow," said her daughter.  "What on earth are we to
do?  I wish we had never come."

The boar-pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of the
human intruders, and stood champing his jaws and blinking his small red
eyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting, and, as
far as the Stossens were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result.

"Shoo!  Hish!  Hish!  Shoo!" cried the ladies in chorus.

"If they think they're going to drive him away by reciting lists of the
kings of Israel and Judah they're laying themselves out for
disappointment," observed Matilda from her seat in the medlar tree.  As
she made the observation aloud Mrs. Stossen became for the first time
aware of her presence.  A moment or two earlier she would have been
anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as deserted
as it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the child's presence on the
scene with absolute relief.

"Little girl, can you find some one to drive away--" she began hopefully.

"_Comment?  Comprends pas_," was the response.

"Oh, are you French?  _Etes vous francaise_?"

"_Pas de tous.  'Suis anglaise_."

"Then why not talk English?  I want to know if--"

"_Permettez-moi expliquer_.  You see, I'm rather under a cloud," said
Matilda.  "I'm staying with my aunt, and I was told I must behave
particularly well to-day, as lots of people were coming for a garden
party, and I was told to imitate Claude, that's my young cousin, who
never does anything wrong except by accident, and then is always
apologetic about it.  It seems they thought I ate too much raspberry
trifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry
trifle.  Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,
because he's told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and tied his hands
and started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry trifle
that they were keeping for the garden-party.  Lots of it went on to his
sailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal went down
Claude's throat, and they can't say again that he has never been known to
eat too much raspberry trifle.  That is why I am not allowed to go to the
party, and as an additional punishment I must speak French all the
afternoon.  I've had to tell you all this in English, as there were words
like 'forcible feeding' that I didn't know the French for; of course I
could have invented them, but if I had said _nourriture obligatoire_ you
wouldn't have had the least idea what I was talking about.  _Mais
maintenant, nous parlons francais_."

"Oh, very well, _tres bien_," said Mrs. Stossen reluctantly; in moments
of flurry such French as she knew was not under very good control.  "_La,
a l'autre cote de la porte, est un cochon_--"

"_Un cochon? Ah, le petit charmant_!" exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm.

"_Mais non, pas du tout petit, et pas du tout charmant; un bete feroce_--"

"_Une bete_," corrected Matilda; "a pig is masculine as long as you call
it a pig, but if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious
beast it becomes one of us at once.  French is a dreadfully unsexing
language."

"For goodness' sake let us talk English then," said Mrs. Stossen.  "Is
there any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pig
is?"

"I always go over the wall, by way of the plum tree," said Matilda.

"Dressed as we are we could hardly do that," said Mrs. Stossen; it was
difficult to imagine her doing it in any costume.

"Do you think you could go and get some one who would drive the pig
away?" asked Miss Stossen.

"I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o'clock; it's not four
yet."

"I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would permit--"

"My conscience would not permit," said Matilda with cold dignity.

"We can't stay here till five o'clock," exclaimed Mrs. Stossen with
growing exasperation.

"Shall I recite to you to make the time pass quicker?" asked Matilda
obligingly.  "'Belinda, the little Breadwinner,' is considered my best
piece, or, perhaps, it ought to be something in French.  Henri Quatre's
address to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in that
language."

"If you will go and fetch some one to drive that animal away I will give
you something to buy yourself a nice present," said Mrs. Stossen.

Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar tree.

"That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet for getting out
of the garden," she remarked cheerfully; "Claude and I are collecting
money for the Children's Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of us
can collect the biggest sum."

"I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown, very glad indeed," said
Mrs. Stossen, digging that coin out of the depths of a receptacle which
formed a detached outwork of her toilet.

"Claude is a long way ahead of me at present," continued Matilda, taking
no notice of the suggested offering; "you see, he's only eleven, and has
golden hair, and those are enormous advantages when you're on the
collecting job.  Only the other day a Russian lady gave him ten
shillings.  Russians understand the art of giving far better than we do.
I expect Claude will net quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon;
he'll have the field to himself, and he'll be able to do the pale,
fragile, not-long-for-this-world business to perfection after his
raspberry trifle experience.  Yes, he'll be _quite_ two pounds ahead of
me by now."

With much probing and plucking and many regretful murmurs the beleaguered
ladies managed to produce seven-and-sixpence between them.

"I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs. Stossen.

Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to their
figure.

"I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten
shillings," she announced stiffly.

Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which
the word "beast" was prominent, and probably had no reference to Tarquin.

"I find I _have_ got another half-crown," said Mrs. Stossen in a shaking
voice; "here you are.  Now please fetch some one quickly."

Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, and
proceeded to pick up a handful of over-ripe medlars from the grass at her
feet.  Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herself
affectionately to the boar-pig.

"Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can't resist medlars when
they're rotten and squashy."

Tarquin couldn't.  By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at
judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while the
delivered captives hurried across the paddock.

"Well, I never!  The little minx!" exclaimed Mrs. Stossen when she was
safely on the high road.  "The animal wasn't savage at all, and as for
the ten shillings, I don't believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny of
it!"

There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment.  If you examine the
books of the fund you will find the acknowledgment: "Collected by Miss
Matilda Cuvering, 2s. 6d."