Netta’s small stock of patience was very speedily exhausted.  She sat up on the sofa and sternly commanded Tessa to desist.

“Go and tell the khit to catch him!” she said.

Tessa, however, by this time had also warmed to the game.  She paid no more attention to her mother’s order than she would have paid to the buzzing of a mosquito.  And when Scooter dived under the sofa on which Netta had been reclining, she burrowed after him with a squeal of merriment.

It was too much for Netta whose feelings had been decidedly ruffled before Tessa’s entrance.  As Scooter shot out on the other side of her, running his queer zigzag course, she snatched the first thing that came to hand, which chanced to be a heavy bronze weight from the writing-table at her elbow, and hurled it at him with all her strength.

Scooter collapsed on the floor like a broken mechanical toy.  Tessa uttered a wild scream and flung herself upon him.

Netta gasped hysterically, horrified but still angry.  “It serves him right—­serves you both right!  Now go away!” she said.

Tessa turned on her knees on the floor.  Scooter was feebly kicking in her arms.  The missile had struck him on the head and one eye was terribly injured.  She gathered him up to her little narrow chest, and he ceased to kick and became quite still.

Over his lifeless body she looked at her mother with eyes of burning furious hatred.  “You’ve killed him!” she said, her voice sunk very low.  “And I hope—­oh, I do hope—­some day—­someone—­will kill you!”

There was that about her at the moment that actually frightened Netta, and it was with undoubted relief that she saw the door open and Major Ralston’s loose-knit lounging figure block the entrance.

“What’s all this noise about?” he began, and stopped short.

Behind him stood another figure, broad, powerful, not overtall.  At sight of it, Tessa uttered a hard sob and scrambled to her feet.  She still clasped poor Scooter’s dead body to her breast, and his blood was on her face and on the white frock she wore.

“Uncle St. Bernard!  Look!  Look!” she said.  “She’s killed my Scooter!”

Netta also arose at this juncture.  “Oh, do take that horrible thing away!” she said.  “If it’s dead, so much the better.  It was no more than a weasel after all.  I hate such pets.”

Major Ralston found himself abruptly though not roughly pushed aside.  Bernard Monck swooped down with the action of a practised footballer and took the furry thing out of Tessa’s hold.  His eyes were very bright and intensely alert, but he did not seem aware of Tessa’s mother.

“Come with me, darling!” he said to the child.  “P’raps I can help.”

He trod upon the carved bronze that had slain Scooter as he turned, and he left the mark of his heel upon it—­the deep impress of an angry giant.

The door closed with decision upon himself and the child, and Major Ralston was left alone with Netta.