“By a young friend of your child, sir, if I am correctly informed,” said Gilead kindly.
“You mean the boy Wimble?” said Mr Brown bitterly. “No doubt, sir, your information—”
“It was at first hand,” put in the visitor, smiling. “I met the young people outside, and got into talk with them. The boy, he himself confessed to me, composed and inserted the advertisement.”
“The grotesque impertinence of it!” cried Mr Brown, boiling over; “the assurance and the inopportuneness!”
“I understand,” said Gilead, “that you authorized the little lady to find, if possible, a home for the animal?”
“Go on, sir, go on!” said Mr Brown resignedly. “Tell me that I authorized her to hold her father up to ridicule before the world.”
“Nay, sir,” said Gilead, “I am quite at sea in the matter.”
“I will acquaint you, Mr Balm,” said the father dismally, “with the facts of the case—especially as they bear in some measure on a confidence I have already reposed in you. Mrs Craddock Flight, sir, made it a condition of our union that the dog should be destroyed.”
“It was the single condition to which you referred, I assume,” said the visitor. “May I venture to ask what suggested it?”
“The dog had bitten her, sir. They will take these unaccountable aversions. It was during a short visit she lately paid us.”