"'Tis herself is in the dining-room," she gasped.
"Not Mrs. Handsomebody?"
"Sorra a thing else. Put them pups in their basket and come out and shut the dure. Ye'd better go into the yard and be at some quate game. Oh, Lord—" and she hurried back to her mistress.
This time we were safe, but there was tomorrow ahead, with certain discovery.
Mr. Watlin, propped in the open doorway, brought his ingenious mind to bear upon the problem.
"Now if Mrs. 'Andsomebody could be put under an obligation to that little dog, she'd probably tike it right into 'er 'eart and 'ome. If that little dog, f'rinstance, should save Mrs. 'Andsomebody from drowning—does she ever go in bathing?"
"Likely, at her age, in December!" sneered Mary Ellen. "Try again."
"We might hold her under water in the bath-tub till Giftie would fish her out," suggested Angel.
It was a colourful spectacle to visualize, and we dallied with it a space before abandoning it as impracticable. It seemed too much to hope that Mrs. Handsomebody, the bath-tub and Giftie could all be assembled at the critical moment.
But Mr. Watlin was not to be rebuffed. "Then there's burglars," he went on. "Suppose Mrs. 'Andsomebody's valuables was to be rescued from a burglar for 'er. She wouldn't be able to do enough for a little dog that 'ad chased 'im out of this very scullery, f'rinstance."