"You and your old woman's superstitions!" he said. "Perhaps you don't know I've a--what d'ye call it?--a portent in my own family--or had when I had a family," he told her, bending again over his boot. "Well, I have, then!" "And what's a portent, silly? I daresay it's nothing to boast of." "It's a little--white--DOG!" He barked the last word at her, loud and sharp, his face suddenly projected into hers. She fell backward and sat on her heels. "Ted! How horrid of you! What does it do?" "I haven't the faintest notion." "Are you making it up?" "Not I. They all made it up. My father, and my grandfather, and the whole tribe. They stuck it into each other, and tried to stick it into me, that whenever one of us is going to die he sees this beastly little hound." "Ted!" she was clinging to the calf she admired now, in an agreeable ecstasy of shuddering. "I wish I had a ghost, too." "You shall have mine, with pleasure." "But why didn't you tell me before?" "I clean forgot it till this minute. My father told me about it when I was quite a little chap." "But is it true, Ted?" "Of course it isn't." "And did they really see it?" "They said they did. You may bet your life they didn't." When he was ready to walk round the little domain he had inherited from his father, Elinor accompanied him to the gate. "I wouldn't have a little white dog for a ghost!" she said to him, slightingly, as they parted. "Anyone could have as good a ghost as that if they tried!" "Everyone couldn't have an ancestor who had tortured one to death to spite his wife!" he said. "You can see a dozen little white dogs any day," she taunted him. "I saw one more than I wanted yesterday when I was out with my gun," he admitted. "That new little beast of Anstey's ran in front of me into every field and frightened the birds. I hardly had a shot." "Tell Bob to keep it at home," advised Nell. "I must," Ted acquiesced, and went. In the course of the morning Bob Anstey, who always appeared some time during each day, came in. Elinor found him standing up by the chimney-piece, manipulating the silver calendar. "You're a day too previous in your calculation," he said. "This isn't the eighteenth, but the seventeenth, madame." "Well, how funny!" Elinor cried. "Now I wonder how Aunt Carrie is! I shall have to tell Ted the year isn't up, after all." To Anstey that was rather a cryptic utterance, but he asked for no explanation. These two were full of little jokes, of allusions, of reminiscences, interesting to them, in which he had no part, close friends as they were. "Can you spare Ted to me for an hour or two this afternoon?" he asked. "She could not," she said, smiling; "she could never spare Ted." "Then come along with us yourself, madame. I want Ted's opinion of that mare I've got my eye on at Wenderling. Your ladyship's opinion would be of value, too."