"Whose dog?" she shrieked.
Ninian looked over his shoulder, held out his hand, finished something that he was saying to Lulu. Monona came to him readily enough, staring, loose-lipped.
"I'll bet I'm your uncle," said Ninian.
Relationship being her highest known form of romance, Monona was thrilled by this intelligence.
"Give us a kiss," said Ninian, finding in the plural some vague mitigation for some vague offence.
Monona, looking silly, complied. And her uncle said my stars, such a great big tall girl—they would have to put a board on her head.
"What's that?" inquired Monona. She had spied his great diamond ring.
"This," said her uncle, "was brought to me by Santa Claus, who keeps a jewellery shop in heaven."
The precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the sun comes up in the west. Of course—often! Some day he was going to melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever after. Another diamond he was going to plant. They say——He did it all gravely, absorbedly. About it he was as conscienceless as a savage. This was no fancy spun to pleasure a child. This was like lying, for its own sake.
He went on talking with Lulu, and now again he was the tease, the braggart, the unbridled, unmodified male.