“Yes. Pug died, I don’t know what of----” “Cream, I should think,” said Lucia. “And cake.” “Well, it may have been. Anyhow, Lady Ambermere had him stuffed, and while I was out this morning, she left him in a glass case at my house, as a present for the Museum. There he is lying on a blue cushion, with one ear cocked, and a great watery eye, and the end of his horrid tongue between his lips.” “No!” said Lucia. “I assure you. And we don’t know what to do. We can’t put him in the Museum, can we? And we’re afraid she’ll take the mittens away if we don’t. But, how can we refuse? She wrote me a note about ‘her precious Pug.’” Lucia remembered how they had refused an Elizabethan spit, though they had subsequently accepted it. But she was not going to remind Georgie of that. She wanted to get a better footing in the Museum than an Elizabethan spit had given her. “What a dreadful thing!” she said. “And so you came to see if your poor old Lucia could help you.” “Well, we all wondered if you might be able to think of something,” said he. Lucia enjoyed this: the Museum was wanting her.... She fixed Georgie with her eye. “Perhaps I can get you out of your hole,” she said. “What I imagine is, Georgie, that you want _me_ to take that awful Pug back to her. I see what’s happened. She had him stuffed, and then found he was too dreadful an object to keep, and so thought she’d be generous to the Museum. We--I should say ‘you,’ for I’ve got nothing to do with it--you don’t care about the Museum being made a dump for all the rubbish that people don’t want in their houses. Do you?” “No, certainly not,” said Georgie. (Did Lucia mean anything by that? Apparently she did.) She became brisk and voluble. “Of course, if you asked my opinion,” said Lucia, “I should say that there has been a little too much dumping done already. But that is not the point, is it? And it’s not my business either. Anyhow, you don’t want any more rubbish to be dumped. As for withdrawing the mittens--only lent, are they?--she won’t do anything of the kind. She likes taking people over and showing them. Yes, Georgie, I’ll help you: tell Mrs. Boucher and Daisy that I’ll help you. I’ll drive over this afternoon--no, I won’t, for I’m going to have a lovely game of golf with you--I’ll drive over to-morrow and take Pug back, with the Committee’s regrets that they are not taxidermists. Or, if you like, I’ll do it on my own authority. How odd to be afraid of poor old Lady Ambermere! Never mind: I’m not. How all you people bully me into doing just what you want! I always was Riseholme’s slave. Put Pug’s case in a nice piece of brown paper, Georgie, for I don’t want to see the horrid little abortion, and don’t think anything more about it. Now let’s have a good little putting match till lunch-time.”