"Can you tell me which side of the railway it is, east or west?" Angela is lunching with the Sellingers?" The Brebis hesitated. She "I am sorry, I don't under- was very nervous about driv stand." "Humph!" growled Ursa Major, "you wouldn't. Perhaps you can tell me how it stands to Eaux Chaudes ? "Oh, that's quite simple. The same charabanc takes you to both." The Brebis was becoming ruffled and confused. She was sitting bolt upright still in her deck-chair with her book in her lap, a finger marking the place, looking up apprehensively into Uncle Bliss' biscuit coloured beard and purple face, as a sheep sometimes surveys a dog through a hole in a fence. It seemed a long while, but I do not think Ursa Major had been baiting her more than forty seconds when I took him by the sleeve, and, exercising my counter-boom, bawled into his ear, "Come to the library. We'll look it up in the map.' But how to get the Brebis safely back into the home pastures ? One could not leave her in that perplexed ovine attitude, suspended between retreat and defiance, peeping through the hedge, tapping the ground with her foot, so to speak. I tried to think of some conclusion to Uncle Bliss' catechism which would leave her more appropriately in possession, less like a brebis who had been dragged through a bush. "You're going to let me drive you to the bazaar?" I reminded her. "You know ing, so nervous that she had not trusted herself in a high two-wheeled vehicle for over twenty-five years; but as I was such a very safe driver, and Joan so very quiet and sure-footed between the shafts, she was going to take her courage in both hands, just for once, and drive with me in the dog-cart to the Sellingers'. The Brebis laid down her conditions. "If you promise to be very careful, and not to use the whip, and to walk downhill. Joan doesn't stumble, does she?" I couldn't promise about the whip, as Joan might go to sleep, and then she would stumble. As to the other conditions, I could be conscientiously reassuring. "I am going to be very brave," the Brebis said, "and it will be tremendously exciting." She was quite the bell-wether now, no longer a baited brebis, entangled in brambles. I ought to have left it at that, but I was fool enough to ask her what she was reading. Aunt Hudson picked up her book, which she had snatched from the shelf when she heard Uncle Bliss in the hall, and looked at the title. She had not the vaguest idea what she was reading. It was a novel by Martha Caraway. "I was just choosing one," she explained. "You like novels? Eh? "No," said Aunt Hudson, 'I can't say I do, not enough to read them seriously. I read one sometimes for an hour after dinner to pass the time when I am not feeling intellectual." I bawled at him. He was going to say "when you are feeling intellectual," but I was just in time. He turned to me and shouted, "I am not deaf." For once his dynamic resources yielded to mine. I morally propelled him through the door. "And what do you read But it was difficult to dovetail Ursa Major into an apologetic when In the library I conveyed to Uncle Bliss that he would be more welcome if he did not bully my guests. "Bully your guests? Who?" "You were not very polite to Miss Hudson." "Not polite. That's a pity. Stupid woman. She knows nothing. I was telling her; that's all." I was surprised that he was not more resentful, but he answered me absent-mindedly, without giving the matter a thought, as he turned over the pages of the gazetteer. She reminds me of a pigeon," he continued. Then added ungallantly, "with the brains taken out." Trifles like the susceptibilities of Miss Hudson, or my opinion of his behaviour to my guests, did not come into the focus of his preoccupation. I rather hoped that he would go off in a huff. It would have meant that we should have seen less of him, perhaps nothing at all. Anyhow, what with the dinosaur and the mush room and the pterodactyl, the tranquillity of Homersfield for the next few months at least seemed to be assured. While he was determining Pyrenean altitudes and directions, I took the opportunity to find out what a saprophyte meant, and was relieved when the dictionary told me that it was nothing more opprobrious than a vegetable organism which lived on decaying organic matter. Not a bad term of abuse ! I wondered if the Brebis would have the curiosity to look it up too. It had been a tempestuous morning for her and all of us, and I don't wonder she was not herself at lunch. The Brebis was accustomed to respect and a number of small attentions from the family, and she had been spoken to scoldingly as if she were a little girl who had forgotten her catechism. She admitted that she was “feeling at a very low par." She attempted to evade going to the Sellingers', but I thought it would be good for her, and coaxed her to come with me. good, stocking the Homer with The bazaar was for a pious object; Renton Magna Church was to have a new organ; all the clergymen in the neighbourhood would be there. She hesitated. Was I quite sure that dreadful man would not be there? I told her that it was very unlikely, and if he did happen to be there, I would smuggle her off at once. In at one gate and out at the other. "In fact," I said, "I do not think we are likely to see much of Uncle Bliss for a very long time." "He is going to New York, Aunt Huddy," Irene volunteered. "And to Africa," added Val. "And to the Pyrenees." "Oh, my dear," said the Brebis, "how mercifully distant." trout, making ugly things pretty, poor people comfortable, and workhouses unnecessary. If you have five figures and miss a train, you can order another one all to yourself, or an aeroplane if you want to get anywhere in a hurry; you can fly to Paris after lunch and come back with marrons glacés for tea; or you can keep a yacht and go anywhere you like-up the Amazon where there are butterflies as big as birds, and birds as bright as butterflies, and no people at all; or to Monte Carlo, if you prefer society; and if you have rheumatism, you needn't go to those horrid French baths, you can have the water brought to you. Five figures means leading a quiet life or an eventful one, just as you choose; telling other people to mind their own business and not to poke their noses into yours; marrying a princess as beautiful as Mummy, if you could find one, which, of course, you The children had been talking to Uncle Bliss. They met him outside the gate, and he got off his bicycle to say goodbye, and he gave Irene a shilling. "He was not half so cross," couldn't, and buying her a new Irene said. pair of seed - pearl earrings every day; and generally behaving like a fairy godfather or godmother, and giving everybody you are fond of, whether they deserve it or not, a perfectly scrumptious time" What a bee-ut-iful picture," said the Brebis. "Or if you prefer it, instead of enjoying all these good things, you can become the sole possessor of the only dinosaur's egg in the world." "Has Uncle Bliss got five figures?" Irene asked. "He has got six. Very nearly seven, I believe." Val, after a process of mental subtraction, arrived at the conclusion that if Uncle Bliss bought the dinosaur's egg he would still have two figures left, and that would be enough to buy nearly half the other things as well. I admitted the substantial accuracy of this calculation. Val had, if anything, underestimated Uncle Bliss' resources. "He could buy a motorcar," Irene suggested, "and sell his bicycle." Then Val had a brilliant idea. Supposing the egg hatched. The new dinosaur might have half a dozen more eggs. Then Uncle Bliss would be the richest man in the world. Six eggs at five figures. That would be thirty figures. The Brebis' arithmetic was a little better than this. "Six figures is a hundred thousand pounds, isn't it? My dear, what wealth! And isn't it rather miserly of him not to keep a motor-car? The children's loyalty was up in arms. Misers were associated in their adventure books with hangmen, spies, informers, and such mean fry, not with explorers and big-game hunters. Irene defended her hero. 66 Then you really think he is a miser," the Brebis said. "No, he is a collector," I explained, "and that means he is not a distributor. The difference between a miser and Uncle Bliss is that one collects money and the other dinosaurs' eggs and pterodactyls. When you get into the habit of collecting banknotes or extinct animals, it hurts frightfully having to spend a shilling on anything else." Irene was so sorry for Uncle Bliss that she wished she had not taken the shilling, but she quite saw the point when I explained that that would have hurt him more. What was to be done? She couldn't give the shilling back. "I know," she said; "I will offer it as a subscription for the dinosaur's egg. Of course, he can keep the whole egg, but that little part of it will be mine." "Half of it," said Val. "The other half will be mine. We each have a sixpenny share.” Irene had not thought of that. She looked at Val with the contempt of the gallery for Shylock after the fifth act. What a grasping spirit! The 'He gave me a shilling," she announced, blushing generously. Val thought that he was going division of these very probto get one too. lematical shares might have. "He put his hand in his ended in a serious misunder standing if I had not intervened. "No," I said, "you can't do that. Giving you the shilling made Uncle Bliss feel comfortable inside. Don't you remember what a bad shape he was in when he came and found you gloating over the things Marjorie sent you?" "He didn't seem to like them much," Irene conceded. "And do you know why? "Because he was J?" "Yes, but J of what?" "Of the papilio and the Goliath beetle, I suppose." "No, you little goose, J of Marjorie, of course." It occurred to me that Uncle Bliss would be happier if he gave some one who did not expect it a shilling every day. "When is he going to America?" Aunt Hudson asked. "I hope very soon." Perhaps to-morrow." "And we haven't seen the museum," Val wailed, "or the menagerie. He might have shown us the cages even if the animals weren't there." "And on Monday Miss Seamore is coming, and we will have to go out for walks and begin lessons again." "Whimp, whimp, whimp!" I bleated, which was the family word for "wail." But I was sorry for the children. Miss Seamore was a good soul, but she quickened the fugitive instinct in the young and the old. It was the end of the holidays, and I remembered how I used to hate ends. And all Uncle Bliss' promises had evaporated in smoke, those visions of the enchanted land in which you met stuffed hippopotamuses and lionesses with cubs, and the incredible lake with its crocodiles, and turtles, and beavers, and seals, and the king penguin who would only bow when it was cold. "He is waiting until he has unpacked all his cases," I told them, "and got things shipshape. When he comes back from New York he will ask you to go and see them; and if he doesn't, I will take you over myself without being asked. And now if you want to know what the pterodactyl is like, Uncle Bliss has drawn a picture of it in the garden. Look for it on the gravel. A penny for whoever finds it first." The children walked to the bazaar. Irene was in charge of a bran-pie, and Val commissioned to help in restoring the balls that were thrown at the coco-nuts. We passed them in the dogcart, and they caught us up when we had to walk up- or down-hill. Joan was sleepy, and I wished I had not yielded to the Brebis' entreaties to leave the whip behind. However, we arrived safely, Val and Irene hanging on at the back. To the Brebis' great relief, Uncle Bliss was not at the bazaar. But everybody was talking about him. The dinosaur's egg was coming to Renton Parva. There was a cable from New York about it in The Times.' There was a |