“What does she know about Stella?” John asked roughly.
“Virtually everything,” laughed Herold. “We talk Stella interminably. When she spoke of throat-cutting, I brought in Stella with great effect. I made her go down on her knees on the big rock and look up at the window and say, 'Princess Stellamaris, I am a bad and wicked girl, and I am very sorry.' She looked so penitent, poor little kid, that I kissed her.”
John laughed half contemptuously and then looked glum. “I can never get a word out of her.”
“That's not her fault,” said Herold. “She confuses you, in some way, with God. And if you stand over her like an early Hebrew Jah in his most direful aspect, you can't expect the poor child to chirrup like a grasshopper.”
“I 'll be glad when I get her under my own control,” said John.
And all this time, while she was being deified, Stellamaris remained tranquilly unaware of the existence of her new devotee. The discipline of the house was so rigid that not a hint or whisper reached the sea-chamber. Perhaps Constable in his wistful, doggy way may have tried to convey Unity's messages, but how can a whine and a shake of the head and a touch of the paw express such a terribly complicated thing as the love of one human being for another? If only Unity had let the dandelion remain, or had slipped a note under his collar, Constable would have done his best to please. At any rate, as the days went on, he showed himself more and more gracious to Unity.
Now it happened one Saturday morning that Stellamaris was wearing a brand-new dressing-jacket. It was a wondrous affair of pale, shot silk that shimmered like mother-of-pearl, and it had frills and sleeves of filmy old Buckingham lace. More than ever did she look like some rare and sweet sea-creature. The jacket had come home during the week, but though it had been the object of her feminine delight, she had reserved the great first wearing for Saturday and the eyes of her Great High Belovedest. Her chances for coquetry were few. She surveyed herself in a hand-mirror, and saw that she was fair.
“Constable,” she said, “if he does n't think it perfectly ravishingly beautiful, I shall die. You think it beautiful, don't you?”
Constable, thus appealed to, rose from the hearthrug, stretched himself, and, approaching, laid his head against his mistress's cheek. Then, a favourite habit, he put his forepaws on the edge of the bed, and stood towering over the sacred charge and gazed with wrinkled brow across the channel, as though scanning the horizon for hostile ships. He had done this a thousand times with no mishap. He would as soon have thought of biting her as of putting a heavy paw on beloved body or limb. But on this particular occasion the edge of the bed gave treacherous footing. To steady himself, he shifted his left paw an inch nearer her arm, and happened to strike the Buckingham lace.
“Down, Constable!” she cried.