Y friend Attley, who would give

My friends on head if
MY away his own head if you told him

you had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of Bettina's pups, and half a dozen women were in raptures at the show on Mittleham lawn.

We picked by lot. Mrs. Godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter, second. I was third, but waived my right because I was already owned by Malachi, Bettina's full brother, whom I had brought over in the car to visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if I had taken home one. Milly, Mrs. Godfrey's younger daughter, pounced on my rejection with squeals of delight, and Attley turned to a sallow-skinned, slackmouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and invited her to pick. She put on a pair of pince-nez that made her look like a camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee, breathed hard, and considered the last couple.

"I think I'd like that sandy-pied one," she said.

"That 's chorea-St. Vitus's dance," Mrs. Godfrey put in. "He ought to have been drowned."

"But I like his cast of countenance," the girl persisted.

"He does n't look a good life," I said, "but perhaps he can be patched up." Miss Sichliffe turned crimson; I saw Mrs. Godfrey exchange a glance with her married daughter, and knew I had said something which would have to be lived down.

"Yes," Miss Sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, "he is n't a good life, but perhaps I can-patch him up. Come here, sir." The misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick's hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to separate them, and Mrs. Godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it out in silence.

"D' you know what that girl's father was?" Mrs. Godfrey asked.

"No," I replied. "I hate her for her own sake. I think she has adenoids, for one thing."

"He was a retired doctor," she explained. "He used to pick up stormy

young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again-with an appetite. Of course no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter." "Strictly legitimate-highly respectable," I said. "But what a life for the girl!"

"Must n't it have been! Now d' you realize 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 on committee of 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 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 dim trail of thought that concerned 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 tennisracket.

"Sorry," she said in her thick, schoolboy-like voice. "I'm sorry for what I said to you about verifying quotations. I did n't know you well enough and-anyhow, I ought n'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 felon 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.

"Well, then, if you say so, and Ella says so, that proves I ought to go abroad." "Will 's wrong, quite wrong," Mrs. Godfrey interrupted; "but you must take the pup."

"My dear boy, my dear boy, don't you ever give anything to a woman.

Bit by bit I got the story out of them in the quiet garden (never a sign from Bettina and Malachi), while Harvey stared me out of countenance, first with one cuttlefish eye and then with the other.

It appeared that a month after Miss Sichliffe took him, the dog Harvey had developed distemper. Miss Sichliffe had nursed him herself for some time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to Mittleham, and wept-actually wept-at Attley's feet, saying that Harvey was all she had or expected to have in this world, and Attley must cure him. Attley, being by wealth, position, and temperament guardian to all lame dogs, had put everything aside for this unsavory job, and, he asserted, Miss Sichliffe had virtually lived with him ever since.

"She went home at night, of course,' he exploded, "but the rest of the time she simply infested the premises. Goodness knows, I'm not particular, but it was a scandal. Even the servants! Three and four times a day, and notes in between, to know how the beast was. Hang it all, don't laugh! And wanting to send me flowers and goldfish. Do I look as if I liked goldfish? Can't you two stop for a minute?" (Mrs. Godfrey and I were clinging to each other for support.) "And it is n't as if I was-was so alluring a personality, is it?"

Attley commands more trust, good will, and affection than most men, for he is that rare angel, an absolutely unselfish bachelor, content to be run by contending syndicates of zealous friends. His situation seemed desperate, and I told him so.

"Instant flight is your only remedy," was my verdict. "I'll take care of both your cars while you 're away, and you can send me over all the greenhouse fruit."

"But why should I be chased out of my house by a she dromedary?" he wailed.

"Oh, stop! stop!" Mrs. Godfrey sobbed, waving her handkerchief. "You 're both wrong. I admit you 're right, but I know you 're wrong."

"Three and four times a day," said Attley, with an awful countenance. "I' not a vain man, but-look here, Ella, I'm not sensitive, I hope, but if you persist in making a joke of it-"

"Oh, be quiet!" she almost shrieked. "D' you imagine for one instant that your friends would ever let Mittleham pass out of their hands? I quite agree it is unseemly for a grown girl to come to Mittleham at all hours of the day and night-"

"I told you she went home o' nights," Attley growled.

"Specially if she goes home o' nights. Oh, but think of the life she must have led, Will!"

"I'm not interfering with it; only she must leave me alone."