pursuit, shedding as he ran sprays of blossom from the mass of sweet-pea that he still clutched in his hands. Fast as he ran the children had reached the piggery before he could overtake them, and he arrived just in time to see Olivia, wondering but unprotesting, hauled and pushed up to the roof of the nearest sty.
They were old buildings in some need of repair, and the rickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian's weight if he had attempted to follow his daughter and her captors on their new vantage ground.
'What are you going to do with her?' he panted. There was no mistaking the grim trend of mischief in those flushed by sternly composed young faces.
'Hang her in chains over a slow fire,' said one of the boys. Evidently they had been reading English history.
'Frow her down the pigs will d'vour her, every bit 'cept the palms of her hands,' said the other boy. It was also evident that they had studied Biblical history.
The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it might be carried into effect at a moment's notice; there had been cases, he remembered, of pigs eating babies.
'You surely wouldn't treat my poor little Olivia in that way?' he pleaded.
'You killed our little cat,' came in stern reminder from three throats.
'I'm sorry I did,' said Octavian, and if there is a standard measurement in truths Octavian's statement was assuredly a large nine.
'We shall be very sorry when we've killed Olivia,' said the girl, 'but we can't be sorry till we've done it.'
The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart before Octavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close and unstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her, but as she began to sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on her that she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the tentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling with the quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of the Parcae Sisters.
'I can't reach her in time,' gasped Octavian, 'she'll be choked in the muck. Won't you help her?'
'No one helped our cat,' came the inevitable reminder.
'I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that,' cried Octavian, with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches forward.
'Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?'
'Yes,' screamed Octavian.
'Holding a candle?'
'An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?'
Octavian agreed to both suggestions.
'For a long, long time?'
'For half an hour,' said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a German king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas-time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly in their eyes.
'All right,' came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a moment later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, who lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scrambling gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass that separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like an unwilling cork from it's slushy embrace. A few minutes later he was listening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her previous experience of filthy spectacles had been on a notably smaller scale.
That same evening when twilight was deepening into darkness Octavian took up his position as penitent under the lone oak-tree, having first carefully undressed the part.
Clad in a zephyr shirt, which on this occasion thoroughly merited its name, he held in one hand a lighted candle and in the other a watch, into which the soul of a dead plumber seemed to have passed. A box of matches lay at his feet and was resorted to on the fairly frequent occasions when the candle succumbed to the night breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, but as Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance he felt certain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-shared vigil.
And the next morning his eyes were gladdened by a sheet of copy-book paper lying beside the blank wall, on which was written the message 'Un-Beast.'
The Phantom Luncheon
'The Smithly-Dubbs are in Town,' said Sir James. 'I wish you would show them some attention. Ask them to lunch with you at the Ritz or somewhere.'
'From the little I've seen of the Smithly-Dubbs I don't thing I want to cultivate their acquaintance,' said Lady Drakmanton.
'They always work for us at election times,' said her husband; 'I don't suppose they influence very many votes, but they have an uncle who is on one of my ward committees, and another uncle speaks sometimes at some of our less important meetings. Those sort of people expect some return in the shape of hospitality.'
'Expect it!' exclaimed Lady Drakmanton; 'the Misses Smithly-Dubb do more than that; they almost demand it. They belong to my club, and hang about the lobby just about lunch-time, all three of them, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths and the six-course look in their eyes. If I were to breathe the word 'lunch' they would hustle me into a taxi and scream 'Ritz' or 'Dieudonne's' to the driver before I knew what was happening.'
'All the same, I think you ought to ask them to a meal of some sort,' persisted Sir James.
'I consider that showing hospitality to the Smithly-Dubbs is carrying Free Food principles to a regrettable extreme,' said Lady Drakmanton; 'I've entertained the Joneses and the Browns and the Snapheimers and the
