Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded.
"Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl—a awful, fearful, deep growl,"—Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling and continuous gurgle—"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you——"
She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit.
"Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back, then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he died. Now you tell me one."
"Which?"
Phillis considered.
"The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."
Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I retired to my arm-chair.
"The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her. Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and faster until——"
"You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet going pad pad over the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously.