"Well, anyway, I think all this mourning's a bit overdone," said Corkran.
Joan was silent, she looked troubled. Felicity had begun to say: "It isn't particularly enlivening to have one's butler shot…' when she was interrupted by a disturbance in the middle of the road. "Oh, good Lord! Wolf!" she cried.
Wolf, emerging from the butcher's shop, had encountered a bull-terrier. Mutual dislike had straightway sprung up between them, and after the briefest preliminaries battle was joined. As Felicity spoke a girl ran forward and tried to catch the bull-terrier. Mr. Amberley joined the fray and grabbed Wolf by the scruff of his neck. The girl's hands grasped the bull-terrier round the throat. "Hold your dog!" she panted. "I'll have to choke Bill. It's the only way."
Mr. Amberley glanced quickly up at her, but her face was bent over the dogs.
The bull-terrier had acquired a satisfactory grip on Wolf's throat, but his mistress ruthlessly squeezed his windpipe and he had to let go. Mr. Amberley swung Wolf back and held him.
The girl clipped a leash on the bull-terrier's collar and at last looked up. "It was your dog's fault," she began and broke off, staring in a startled way at Mr. Amberley and growing rather pale.
"It usually is," said Frank coolly. "But I don't think your dog's hurt."
Her eyes fell. "No," she said and would have moved away had not Felicity come up.
"I say,. I'm most awfully sorry!" Felicity said. "I ought to have had him on the lead. I do hope he hasn't hurt your dog?"
The other girl smiled rather scornfully. "Rather the other way round, I should say."