Flurry put the end of his cigarette into his finger-glass, and lit another at the flaming tongue of my tame Chinese dragon. "I didn't know you had one that would carry a lady?" he said. "Oh rot!" said Bernard helplessly. "I haven't one that will carry myself," went on Flurry. "There's five lame legs among three of them this minute. Anyway the hounds are in sulphur." The discussion progressed with the prolixity proper to such themes; I think it was Andrew who suggested the paper-chase. He had, he said, ridden in paper-chases in Egypt, and he gave us details of the stark mud walls and fathomless water-courses that were common-places of these events. We were left with the impression that none of us had ever seen obstacles so intimidating, and, more than that, if we had seen them we should have gone home in tears. "I think we'd better make a hare of _you_," said Flurry, fixing expressionless eyes upon Captain Larpent. "It mightn't be hard." The double edge of this suggestion was lost upon Andrew, who accepted it as a tribute, but said he was afraid he didn't know the country well enough. "That's your Egyptian darkness," said Flurry with unexpected erudition. Andrew glanced sideways and suspiciously at him over the bridge of his sunburnt nose, and said rather defiantly that if he could get hold of a decent horse he wouldn't mind having a try. "I suppose you ride about 11.6?" asked Flurry, after a moment or two of silence. His manner had softened; I thought I knew what was coming. "I've a little horse that I was thinking of parting..." he began. A yell, sharp and sudden as a flash of lightning, was uttered outside the door, followed by a sliding crash of crockery, and more yells. We plunged into the hall, and saw Julia, the elderly parlourmaid, struggling on the floor amid ruins of coffee cups and their adjuncts. "The rat! He went in under me foot!" she shrieked. "He's in under me this minute!" Here the rat emerged from the ruins. Simultaneously the drawing-room door burst open, and the streaming shrieks of Minx and her son and daughter were added to those of the still prostrate Julia. The chase swept down the passage to the kitchen stairs, the pack augmented by Bob, the red setter, and closely followed by the dinner party. A rat is a poor performer on a staircase, and, at the door leading into the turf-house, the dogs seemed to be on top of him. The bolt-hole under the door, that his own teeth had prepared, gave him an instant of advantage; Flurry had the door open in a second, someone snatched the passage lamp from the wall, but it was obviously six to four on the rat.