"You leave it alone, and it won't do you any harm!" said Hemingway. "You're only exciting it, waving your arms about like that. Here, come here! Good dog, bring it here, then!"
"Well, well, well!" said a voice from the farther bank. "What's this? A regatta?"
"Oh, it's you, is it, sir?" said the Inspector, casting an unfavourable eye over Mr. Hugh Dering. "Well, perhaps you'll call your dog off, since you happen to be here."
"Nothing," said Hugh, visibly enjoying the sight of the constables wrestling with Prince's advances, "would give me greater pleasure, if he were my dog. But he isn't."
Vicky's Borzoi bounded into view at this moment, and at once began to bark at the strangers. The two constables showed a marked disposition to leave the pool in haste, but Hugh grasped the Borzoi by the collar, and told him to be quiet. The Inspector began to explain, as tactfully as he could, that neither Hugh's nor the dogs' presence was in anyway necessary to him, but before he had succeeded in making this clear to Mr. Hugh Dering, who was suddenly and unaccountably slow of understanding, Vicky had appeared upon the scene - a demure Vicky, in white organdie with black ribbons.
"Oh, I shouldn't paddle there!" Vicky said, quite distressed. "It's a very muddy, dirty kind of a pond. My mother never used to let me go in it."
"Miss, will you call off your dog?" begged Fisher, against whose legs the spaniel was thrusting his stick.
"Do you mind frightfully if I don't?" said Vicky. "He's bound to shake himself all over me, you see, and I don't much want him to."
Hugh, who had been interestedly surveying the treasures collected from the bosom of the pool, took pity on the police. "All right, I'll rescue you," he said. "Stand clear, Vicky! Come here, Prince! Bring it!"
The spaniel, hopeful of finding a more willing playmate, left the pool, laid his stick at Hugh's feet, and shook himself generously over Hugh's trousers. Hugh knotted his handkerchief through the dog's collar, and bade Vicky remove him from the scene.