"Suffering Cats! What's taken you, Ambrose?" cried Master Nathaniel. "Stag-hunting, they say, was a royal sport. Even the Honeysuckles might stoop to it!"
"Don't the Honeysuckles consider a moth a stag, Ambrose?" laughed Master Polydore Vigil.
But that evening the old joke seemed to have lost its savour.
"Nathaniel," said Master Ambrose solemnly, "the curse of our country has fallen upon you and me ... and you are hunting moths!"
Now, "curse" happened to be one of the words that had always frightened Master Nathaniel. So much did he dislike it that he even avoided the words that resembled it in sound, and had made Dame Marigold dismiss a scullery-maid, merely because her name happened to be Kirstie.
Hence, Master Ambrose's words sent him into a frenzy of nervous irritation.
"Take that back, Ambrose! Take that back!" he roared. "Speak for yourself. The ... the ... the cur ... nothing of that sort is on me!"
"That is not true, Nathaniel," said Master Ambrose sternly. "I have only too good reason to fear that Moonlove is stricken by the same sickness as Ranulph, and...."
"You lie!" shouted Master Nathaniel.
"And in both cases," continued Master Ambrose, relentlessly, "the cause of the sickness was ... fairy fruit."