Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to their figure.

“I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten shillings,” she announced stiffly.

Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which the word “beast” was prominent, and probably had no reference to Tarquin.

“I find I have got another half-crown,” said Mrs. Stossen in a shaking voice; “here you are.  Now please fetch some one quickly.”

Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of over-ripe medlars from the grass at her feet.  Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herself affectionately to the boar-pig.

“Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can’t resist medlars when they’re rotten and squashy.”

Tarquin couldn’t.  By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while the delivered captives hurried across the paddock.

“Well, I never!  The little minx!” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen when she was safely on the high road.  “The animal wasn’t savage at all, and as for the ten shillings, I don’t believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny of it!”

There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment.  If you examine the books of the fund you will find the acknowledgment:  “Collected by Miss Matilda Cuvering, 2s. 6d.”

THE BROGUE

The hunting season had come to an end, and the Mullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue.  There had been a kind of tradition in the family for the past three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was over; but seasons came and went without anything happening to justify such ill-founded optimism.  The animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on, in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid of.  The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood had been known to suggest that the first letter of its name was superfluous.  The Brogue had been variously described in sale catalogues as a light-weight hunter, a lady’s hack, and, more simply, but still with a touch of imagination, as a useful brown gelding, standing 15.1.  Toby Mullet had ridden him for four seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost any sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is an animal that knows the country.  The Brogue knew the country intimately, having personally created most of the gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for many miles round.  His manners and characteristics were not ideal in the hunting field, but he was probably rather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack on country roads.  According to the Mullet family, he was not really