It is only to complete this series of confessions that I explain how this preface came to be written. I was riding home with a friend late one raw afternoon at the close of a long day’s hunting in one of the Midland counties of England, and we stopped to refresh ourselves and horses at a wayside inn called The Holly Bush. When we mounted again at the door, I reached up with my hunting crop and struck the holly bush that hung over the door as a sign. It rattled like metal, and as we rode away I said to my companion:
“That wasn’t a real holly bush!”
“That wasn’t real whiskey!” he replied.
The memory of the mongoose story which these remarks called up cheered us more than the pause at the inn.
“The mongoose story is almost the only tale that need not be explained even to a Scotchman,” my friend added.
This is how I came to think of explaining the construction of my stories, and how I came to call my confessions “The Bush.”
THE END.