diagonally from the waistband to the bottom hem. I knew, even while I offered one from the back of my tie, that a pin would be no use. “Cattersby,” said Lalage, “will be mad--raging mad. She’s always at me because things will tear my clothes. Horrid nuisance clothes are, aren’t they? But Cattersby doesn’t think so of course. She likes them.” The lady’s name is Battersby, not Cattersby. She held the position of governess to Lalage for more than a year and is therefore entitled to respect. Her predecessor, a Miss Thomas, resigned after six weeks. It was my mother who recommended Miss Battersby to Canon Beresford. I felt that I ought to protest against Lalage’s irreverent way of speaking. In mere loyalty to my mother, apart altogether from the respect which, as a landed proprietor, I naturally entertain for all forms of law and order, I was absolutely bound to say something. “You should speak of her as Miss Battersby,” I said firmly. “I call her Cattersby,” said Lalage, “because that is her nature.” I said that I understood what this marker meant; but Lalage, who even then had a remarkable faculty for getting at the naked truth of things, did not even pretend to believe me. “Come along,” she said, “and I’ll show you why.” I followed her meekly, leading my bicycle, which, like Lalage’s frock, had suffered in its contest with the laurel. We passed through the stable yard and I stopped to put my bicycle into the coach house. An Irish terrier, Lalage’s property, barked at me furiously, thinking, I suppose, that I intended to steal Canon Beresford’s cart. Lalage chose to regard this as a ridiculous affectation on the part of the dog and shut him up in the stable as a punishment for folly. Then we climbed a stile, paddled round a large manure heap, crossed an ash pit, and came at last to a pigsty. There were no pigs in it, and it was, for a pigsty, very clean. Lalage opened the gate and we entered the small enclosure in which the pigs, if there had been pigs, would have taken food and exercise. “You’ll have to stoop down now and crawl,” said Lalage. “You needn’t be afraid. The pigs were sold last week.” I realized that I was being invited to enter the actual home, the private sleeping room, of the departed swine. The door of it had been newly painted. While I knelt in front of it I read a notice which stretched across it in large white letters, done, apparently, with chalk: The Office of the Anti-cat Editor: Miss Lalage Beresford, B. A. Sub-Editor: Ditto. Ditto. Underneath this inscription was a carefully executed drawing of a spear with a large, a disproportionately large, and vicious looking barb. A sort of banner depended from its shaft, with these words on it: “For Use on Cattersby. Revenge is sweet!” I looked round at Lalage, who was on her hands and knees behind me.