Mr Musgrave halted and regarded her inquiringly, and Martha, with the fear of King's warning relative to the police and the criminal nature of concealing dogs exciting her worst apprehensions, informed him dolefully that some one must have taken Diogenes away. "I went out to 'is blessed kennel to take him a few bones," she explained, "an' the turn it give me to find the dear hanimal gone--chain an' all, sir." Mr Musgrave with the utmost gravity pointed to the door at his back. "Diogenes is in there," he announced. "I forgot his feeding time." Martha gasped. "In the _drawing-room_, sir?" she ejaculated. "I was lonely," Mr Musgrave explained. From force of long habit he treated Martha as a tried and trusted friend. "I find him companionable." "Lor'!" remarked Martha. She scrutinised her master attentively, the idea that he must be sickening for something suggesting itself to her mind. "Dogs are company, that's certain," she said. "When he's 'ad 'is supper you'd like 'im back in the drawing-room, I suppose, sir?" "Yes," he answered. "I think he is sufficiently at home now to be allowed to run about as he likes." Martha took Diogenes to the kitchen and fed him, contemplating him with renewed interest while he gnawed his bones under the table. "There's something about that hanimal as I don't understand," she mused. "If that ain't the same dog, though different, as burst in after the cat with the young lady from the 'All, I'll eat my apron. It's the same young lady comes to see 'im, anyway. If it isn't 'er dog what does she come for? And if it is 'er dog what's the master doing with it? It's my belief," she further reflected, wiping the perspiration from her face with the apron she had dedicated to gastronomic purposes, "that the master is courtin' the young lady, or the young lady is courtin' the master, through that blessed dog. Now I wonder," and Martha turned to the stove and went through mysterious manoeuvres with the vessels upon it, "how that will work? Come to my time o' life and his, change--that kind of change--makes for trouble as a rule." Small wonder that in the disturbed preoccupation of his cook's mind Mr Musgrave's dinner that night suffered in the cooking. But Mr Musgrave was himself too preoccupied to notice this; the business of eating had no interest for him. He was relieved on returning to the drawing-room to find Diogenes in occupation of the rug once more; and Diogenes, who had the gregarious instinct even more deeply implanted than Mr Musgrave, in whom it was a recent development, welcomed him effusively and finally stretched himself at Mr Musgrave's feet and snorted contentedly, while the master, of the house sat back in his chair and read, and--which did not astonish Diogenes, though it would have amazed anyone intimate with John Musgrave's lifetime habits--violated another rule by smoking a cigar while he read.