he was fascinated by the way they wagged their tails.  It suggested an invention:  of what nature he could not yet determine.  He also formed a brotherly intimacy with a lame donkey belonging to the sexton, and used to feed him with pate de foie gras sandwiches, specially prepared by Wiggleswick, until he was authoritatively informed that raw carrots would be more acceptable.  To see the two of them side by side watching the ducks in the pond wag their tails was a touching spectacle.

Another amenity in Septimus’s peaceful existence was Emmy.

Being at this time out of an engagement, she paid various flying visits to Nunsmere, bringing with her an echo of comic opera and an odor of Peau d’Espagne.  She dawned on Septimus’s horizon like a mischievous and impertinent planet, so different from Zora, the great fixed star of his heaven, yet so pretty, so twinkling, so artlessly and so obviously revolving round some twopenny-halfpenny sun of her own, that he took her, with Wiggleswick, the ducks and the donkey, into his close comradeship.  It was she who had ordained the carrots.  She had hair like golden thistledown, and the dainty, blonde skin that betrays every motion of the blood.  She could blush like the pink tea-rose of an old-fashioned English garden.  She could blanch to the whiteness of alabaster.  Her eyes were forget-me-nots after rain.  Her mouth was made for pretty slang and kisses.  Neither her features nor her most often photographed expression showed the tiniest scrap of what the austere of her sex used to call character.  When the world smiled on her she laughed:  when it frowned, she cried.  When she met Septimus Dix, she flew to him as a child does to a new toy, and spent gorgeous hours in pulling him to pieces to see how he worked.

“Why aren’t you married?” she asked him one day.

He looked up at the sky—­they were on the common—­an autumn stretch of pearls and purples, with here and there a streak of wistful blue, as if seeking the inspiration of a reason.

“Because no one has married me,” he replied.

Emmy laughed.  “That’s just like you.  You expect a woman to drag you out of your house by the scruff of your neck and haul you to church without your so much as asking her.”

“I’ve heard that lots of women do,” said Septimus.

Emmy looked at him sharply.  Every woman resents a universal criticism of her sex, but cannot help feeling a twinge of respect for the critic.  She took refuge in scorn.

“A real man goes out and looks for a wife.”

“But suppose he doesn’t want one?”

“He must want a woman to love.  What can his life be without a woman in it?  What can anybody’s life be without some one to care for?  I really believe you’re made of sawdust.  Why don’t you fall in love?”

Septimus took off his hat, ran his fingers through his upstanding hair, re-covered his head, and looked at her helplessly.