"Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday," said Mrs. Sangrail.

"This next Thursday?" asked Clovis

His mother nodded.

"You've rather done it, haven't you?" he chuckled; "Jane Martlet has only
been here five days, and she never stays less than a fortnight, even when
she's asked definitely for a week.  You'll never get her out of the house
by Thursday."

"Why should I?" asked Mrs. Sangrail; "she and Dora are good friends,
aren't they?  They used to be, as far as I remember."

"They used to be; that's what makes them all the more bitter now.  Each
feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom.  Nothing fans the flame
of human resentment so much as the discovery that one's bosom has been
utilised as a snake sanatorium."

"But what has happened?  Has some one been making mischief?"

"Not exactly," said Clovis; "a hen came between them."

"A hen?  What hen?"

"It was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and Dora sold it to
Jane at a rather exotic price.  They both go in for prize poultry, you
know, and Jane thought she was going to get her money back in a large
family of pedigree chickens.  The bird turned out to be an abstainer from
the egg habit, and I'm told that the letters which passed between the two
women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on to a
sheet of notepaper."

"How ridiculous!" said Mrs. Sangrail.  "Couldn't some of their friends
compose the quarrel?"

"People tried," said Clovis, "but it must have been rather like composing
the storm music of the 'Fliegende Hollander.'  Jane was willing to take
back some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take back the hen,
but Dora said that would be owning herself in the wrong, and you know
she'd as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as do that."

"It's a most awkward situation," said Mrs. Sangrail.  "Do you suppose
they won't speak to one another?"

"On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to leave off.  Their
remarks on each other's conduct and character have hitherto been governed
by the fact that only four ounces of plain speaking can be sent through
the post for a penny."

"I can't put Dora off," said Mrs. Sangrail.  "I've already postponed her
visit once, and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave before
her self-allotted fortnight is over."

"Miracles are rather in my line," said Clovis.  "I don't pretend to be
very hopeful in this case but I'll do my best."

"As long as you don't drag me into it--" stipulated his mother.

* * * * *

"Servants are a bit of a nuisance," muttered Clovis, as he sat in the
smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in the
intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had
irreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox.  It was
partly compounded of old brandy and partly of curacoa; there were other
ingredients, but they were never indiscriminately revealed.

"Servants a nuisance!" exclaimed Jane, bounding into the topic with the
exuberant plunge of a hunter when it leaves the high road and feels turf
under its hoofs; "I should think they were!  The trouble I've had in
getting suited this year you would hardly believe.  But I don't see what
you have to complain of--your mother is so wonderfully lucky in her
servants.  Sturridge, for instance--he's been with you for years, and I'm
sure he's a paragon as butlers go."

"That's just the trouble," said Clovis.  "It's when servants have been
with you for years that they become a really serious nuisance.  The 'here
to-day and gone to-morrow' sort don't matter--you've simply got to
replace them; it's the stayers and the paragons that are the real worry."

"But if they give satisfaction--"

"That doesn't prevent them from giving trouble.  Now, you've mentioned
Sturridge--it was Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made
the observation about servants being a nuisance."

"The excellent Sturridge a nuisance!  I can't believe it."

"I know he's excellent, and we just couldn't get along without him; he's
the one reliable element in this rather haphazard household.  But his
very orderliness has had an effect on him.  Have you ever considered what
it must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the
correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a
lifetime?  To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver and
glass and table linen shall be used and set out on what occasions, to
have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard under a minutely devised and
undeviating administration, to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent,
and, as far as your own department is concerned, omniscient?"

"I should go mad," said Jane with conviction.

"Exactly," said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing his completed Ella
Wheeler Wilcox.

"But Sturridge hasn't gone mad," said Jane with a flutter of inquiry in
her voice.

"On most points he's thoroughly sane and reliable," said Clovis, "but at
times he is subject to the most obstinate delusions, and on those
occasions he becomes not merely a nuisance but a decided embarrassment."

"What sort of delusions?"

"Unfortunately they usually centre round one of the guests of the house
party, and that is where the awkwardness comes in.  For instance, he took
it into his head that Matilda Sheringham was the Prophet Elijah, and as
all that he remembered about Elijah's history was the episode of the
ravens in the wilderness he absolutely declined to interfere with what he
imagined to be Matilda's private catering arrangements, wouldn't allow
any tea to be sent up to her in the morning, and if he was waiting at
table he passed her over altogether in handing round the dishes."

"How very unpleasant.  Whatever did you do about it?"

"Oh, Matilda got fed, after a fashion, but it was judged to be best for
her to cut her visit short.  It was really the only thing to be done,"
said Clovis with some emphasis.

"I shouldn't have done that," said Jane, "I should have humoured him in
some way.  I certainly shouldn't have gone away."

Clovis frowned.

"It is not always wise to humour people when they get these ideas into
their heads.  There's no knowing to what lengths they may go if you
encourage them."

"You don't mean to say he might be dangerous, do you?" asked Jane with
some anxiety.

"One can never be certain," said Clovis; "now and then he gets some idea
about a guest which might take an unfortunate turn.  That is precisely
what is worrying me at the present moment."

"What, has he taken a fancy about some one here now?" asked Jane
excitedly; "how thrilling!  Do tell me who it is."

"You," said Clovis briefly.

"Me?"

Clovis nodded.

"Who on earth does he think I am?"

"Queen Anne," was the unexpected answer.

"Queen Anne!  What an idea.  But, anyhow, there's nothing dangerous about
her; she's such a colourless personality."

"What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne?" asked Clovis rather
sternly.

"The only thing that I can remember about her," said Jane, "is the saying
'Queen Anne's dead.'"

"Exactly," said Clovis, staring at the glass that had held the Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, "dead."

"Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen Anne?" asked Jane.

"Ghost?  Dear no.  No one ever heard of a ghost that came down to
breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and honey with a healthy appetite.
No, it's the fact of you being so very much alive and flourishing that
perplexes and annoys him.  All his life he has been accustomed to look on
Queen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and done
with, 'as dead as Queen Anne,' you know; and now he has to fill your
glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time you
had at the Dublin Horse Show, and naturally he feels that something's
very wrong with you."

"But he wouldn't be downright hostile to me on that account, would he?"
Jane asked anxiously.

"I didn't get really alarmed about it till lunch to-day," said Clovis; "I
caught him glowering at you with a very sinister look and muttering:
'Ought to be dead long ago, she ought, and some one should see to it.'
That's why I mentioned the matter to you."

"This is awful," said Jane; "your mother must be told about it at once."

"My mother mustn't hear a word about it," said Clovis earnestly; "it
would upset her dreadfully.  She relies on Sturridge for everything."

"But he might kill me at any moment," protested Jane.

"Not at any moment; he's busy with the silver all the afternoon."

"You'll have to keep a sharp look-out all the time and be on your guard
to frustrate any murderous attack," said Jane, adding in a tone of weak
obstinacy: "It's a dreadful situation to be in, with a mad butler
dangling over you like the sword of What's-his-name, but I'm certainly
not going to cut my visit short."

Clovis swore horribly under his breath; the miracle was an obvious
misfire.

It was in the hall the next morning after a late breakfast that Clovis
had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from
an old putter.

"Where is Miss Martlet?" he asked the butler, who was at that moment
crossing the hall.

"Writing letters in the morning-room, sir," said Sturridge, announcing a
fact of which his questioner was already aware.

"She wants to copy the inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre," said
Clovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall.  "I wish
you'd take it to her; my hands are all over oil.  Take it without the
sheath, it will be less trouble."

The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its well-cared for
old age, and carried it into the morning-room.  There was a door near the
writing-table leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it with
such lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen him
come in.  Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and her
hastily-packed luggage to the station.

"Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from her ride and finds
you have gone," he observed to the departing guest, "but I'll make up
some story about an urgent wire having called you away.  It wouldn't do
to alarm her unnecessarily about Sturridge."

Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis' ideas of unnecessary alarm, and was
almost rude to the young man who came round with thoughtful inquiries as
to luncheon-baskets.

The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that Dora wrote the
same day postponing the date of her visit, but, at any rate, Clovis holds
the record as the only human being who ever hustled Jane Martlet out of
the time-table of her migrations.

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."

Once upon a time, when the gods were building their abodes, a certain
builder came and offered to erect them, in the space of three
half-years, a city so well fortified that they should be quite safe in
it from the incursions of the forest-giants and the giants of the
mountains, even although these foes should have already penetrated
within the enclosure Midgard. He asked, however, for his reward, the
goddess Freyja, together with the sun and moon. The gods thought over
the matter a long while, and at length agreed to his terms, on the
understanding that he would finish the whole work himself without any
one's assistance, and that all was to be finished within the space of
one single winter. If anything remained to be done when the first day of
summer came, the builder was to entirely forfeit the reward agreed on.
When the builder was told this he asked that he might be allowed the use
of his horse, Svadilfari, and to this the gods, by the advice of Loki,
agreed.

On the first day of winter the builder set to work, and during the night
he caused his horse to draw stones for the building. The gods beheld
with astonishment the extraordinary size of these, and marked with
wonder that the horse did much more work than his master. The contract
between them and the giant had, however, been confirmed with many oaths
and in the presence of many witnesses, for without such a precaution a
giant would not have trusted himself among the gods, especially at a
time when Thor was returning from an expedition he had made into the
east against the giants.

The winter was far advanced, and towards its end the city had been built
so strongly and so lofty as to be almost secure. The time was nearly
expired, only three days remaining, and nothing was wanted to complete
the work save the gates, which were not yet put up. The gods then began
to deliberate, and to ask one another who it was that had advised that
Freyja should be given to one who dwelt in Jotunheim, and that they
should plunge the heavens in darkness by allowing one to carry away with
him the sun and moon. They all agreed that only Loki could have given
such bad counsel, and that it would be only just to either make him
contrive some way or other to prevent the builder accomplishing his work
and having a right to claim his reward, or to put him to death. They at
once laid hands on Loki, who, in his fright, promised upon oath to do
what they desired, let it cost him what it might.

That very night, while the builder was employing his horse to convey
stones, a mare suddenly ran out of a neighbouring forest and commenced
to neigh. The horse broke loose and ran after the mare into the forest,
and the builder ran after his horse.

Between one thing and another the whole night was lost, so that when day
broke the work was not completed.

The builder, recognising that he could by no means finish his task,
took again his giant form; and the gods, seeing that it was a
mountain-giant with whom they had to deal, feeling that their oath did
not bind them, called on Thor. He at once ran to them, and paid the
builder his fee with a blow of his hammer which shattered his skull to
pieces and threw him down headlong into Niflhel.

The horse Sleipner comes of the horse Svadilfari, and it excels all
others possessed by gods or men.