"What did he say, Madge?" asked Sybil Lethbridge.
"He said," remarked Miss Saunderson, "'Sorry. No bon, as they say. It really wasn't worth it—not for Toots.' Can you beat it?" she stormed. "'Not for Toots!' Poor little heart—drowning before that brute's eyes."
"Of course," said Sybil, thoughtfully, "the mill-stream is very dangerous."
"My dear Sybil," answered Madge Saunderson, coldly, "if you're going to take that point of view I have nothing more to say. But I'd like to know what you'd have said if it had been Ruffles."
The terrier in question regarded the speaker with an expectant eye, in which thoughts of cake shone brightly.
"What happened then?" asked one of the audience.
"We walked in silence down to the pool below," continued Madge. "And there—we found him—my little Toots. He floated to the side, and Mr. Benton was actually daring enough to stoop down and pull him out of the water. It was then that he added insult to injury," she went on, in a voice of suppressed fury. "'Rotten luck, Miss Saunderson,' he said; 'but in a way it's rather a happy release for the poor little brute, isn't it? I'm afraid only your kind heart prevented him being put away years ago.'"
A silence had settled on the room, a silence which was broken at length by Sybil.
"He was very old, wasn't he?" she murmured. Madge Saunderson's eyes flashed ominously. "Eighteen," she said. "And I quite fail to see that that's any excuse. You wouldn't let an old man of ninety drown, would you—just because he was old? And Toots was quite as human as any old man, and far less trouble."
Such had been the official communiqué, issued to a feminine gathering at tea-time; in due course it travelled to the rest of the house-party. And, as is the way with such stories, it had not lost in the telling.