‘Strictly legitimate—­highly respectable,’ I said.  ’But what a life for the daughter!’

‘Mustn’t it have been! Now d’you realise what you said just now?’

’Perfectly; and now you’ve made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?’

When we reached it they were all inside, sitting in committee on names.

‘What shall you call yours?’ I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.

‘Harvey,’ she replied—­’Harvey’s Sauce, you know.  He’s going to be quite saucy when I’ve’—­she saw Mrs. Godfrey and me coming through the French window—­’when he’s stronger.’

Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I thought of the name.

‘Oh, splendid,’ I said at random.  ‘H with an A, A with an R, R with a—­’

‘But that’s Little Bingo,’ some one said, and they all laughed.

Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, ’You ought always to verify your quotations.’

It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word ‘quotation’ set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory’s reach as a cat sits just beyond a dog’s jump.  When I was going home, Miss Sichliffe came up to me in the twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her tennis-racket.

‘’Sorry,’ she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice.  ’I’m sorry for what I said to you about verifying quotations.  I didn’t know you well enough and—­anyhow, I oughtn’t to have.’

‘But you were quite right about Little Bingo,’ I answered.  ’The spelling ought to have reminded me.’

‘Yes, of course.  It’s the spelling,’ she said, and slouched off with the pup sliding after her.  Once again my brain began to worry after something that would have meant something if it had been properly spelled.  I confided my trouble to Malachi on the way home, but Bettina had bitten him in four places, and he was busy.

Weeks later, Attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped Malachi let me know that Bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur.  He greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and I greeted Mrs. Godfrey, Attley, and a big basket.

‘You’ve got to help me,’ said Attley tiredly.  We took the basket into the garden, and there staggered out the angular shadow of a sandy-pied, broken-haired terrier, with one imbecile and one delirious ear, and two most hideous squints.  Bettina and Malachi, already at grips on the lawn, saw him, let go, and fled in opposite directions.

‘Why have you brought that fetid hound here?’ I demanded.

‘Harvey?  For you to take care of,’ said Attley.  ’He’s had distemper, but I’m going abroad.’

‘Take him with you.  I won’t have him.  He’s mentally afflicted.’

‘Look here,’ Attley almost shouted, ‘do I strike you as a fool?’

‘Always,’ said I.