From Windles to Southampton is a distance of about twenty miles; and the rain had started to fall when the car, an open one lacking even the poor protection of a cape hood, had accomplished half the homeward journey. For the last ten miles Mr. Mortimer had been nursing a sullen hatred for all created things; and, when entering the house, he came upon Mr. Bennett hopping about in the hall, endeavouring to detain him and tell him some long and uninteresting story, his venom concentrated itself upon his erstwhile friend. “Oh, get out of the way!” he snapped, shaking off the other’s hand. “Can’t you see I’m wet?” “Wet! Wet!” Mr. Bennett’s voice quivered with self-pity. “So am I wet!” “Father dear,” said Billie reprovingly, “you really oughtn’t to have come into the house after bathing without drying yourself. You’ll spoil the carpet.” “I’ve _not_ been bathing! I’m trying to tell you....” “Hullo!” said Bream, with amiable innocence, coming in at the tail-end of the party. “Been having a jolly bathe?” Mr. Bennett danced with silent irritation, and, striking a bare toe against the leg of a chair, seized his left foot and staggered into the arms of Webster, who had been preparing to drift off to the servants’ hall. Linked together, the two proceeded across the carpet in a movement which suggested in equal parts the careless vigour of the cake-walk and the grace of the old-fashioned mazurka. “What the devil are you doing, you fool?” cried Mr. Bennett. “Nothing, sir. And I should be glad if you would accept my week’s notice,” replied Webster calmly. “What’s that?” “My notice sir, to take effect at the expiration of the current week. I cannot acquiesce in being cursed and sworn at.” “Oh, go to blazes!” “Very good, sir.” Webster withdrew like a plenipotentiary who has been handed his papers on the declaration of war, and Mr. Bennett, sprang to intercept Mr. Mortimer, who had slipped by and was making for the stairs. “Mortimer!” “Oh, what _is_ it?” “That infernal dog of yours. I insist on your destroying it.” “What’s it been doing?” “The savage brute chased me all over the garden and kept me sitting up on that damned castle the whole of the morning!” “Father darling,” interposed Billie, pausing on her way up the stairs, “you mustn’t get excited. You know it’s bad for you. I don’t expect poor old Smith meant any harm,” she added pacifically, as she disappeared in the direction of the landing. “Of course he didn’t,” snapped Mr. Mortimer. “He’s as quiet as a lamb.” “I tell you he chased me from one end of the garden to the other! I had to run like a hare!” The unfortunate Bream, whose sense of the humorous was simple and childlike, was not proof against the picture thus conjured up. “C’k!” giggled Bream helplessly. “C’k, c’k, c’k!”