They were on the very best of terms, these two friends of his, possibly because of their absolute unlikeness,—Punch, large, solemn, imperturbable, with a beautifully-curved slow-waving tail and no voice; Scamp, a bundle of wriggling nerves moved by electricity, with a sharp excited bark and not even the stump of a tail. When he needed to wag he wagged the whole of his body behind his front legs.

These two were sitting watching him expectantly as Mrs. Carré brought in his dinner that first day, and she instantly ordered them out.

Punch rose at once, cast one look of grave appeal at Graeme, as who would say—"Sorry to leave you, but this is the kind of thing I have to put up with,"—and walked slowly away. Scamp grovelled flat and crawled to the door like a long hairy caterpillar.

"Oh, let them stop," said Graeme. "I like them by me," and the culprits turned hopefully with pricked ears and anxious faces.

"Mais non! They are troublesome beasts. Allez, Ponch! Allez, Scamp! A couche!"—and their heads and ears drooped and they slunk away.

But, presently, there came a rustling at the wide-open window which gave on to the field at the back, and Graeme laughed out—and he had not smiled for days—at sight of two deprecatingly anxious faces looking in upon him,—a solemn brown one with black spots above the eloquent grave eyes, and a roguish white one with pink blemishes on a twisting black nose. And while the large brown face loomed steadily above two powerful front paws, the small white face only appeared at intervals as the nervous little body below flung it up to the sill in a series of spasmodic leaps.

"We would esteem it a very great favour, if you are quite sure it would not inconvenience you," said Punch, as plain as speech.

"Do, do, do, do, do give us leave!" signalled Scamp, with every twist of his quivering nose, and every gleam of his glancing eyes, and every hair on end.

A click of the tongue, a noiseless graceful bound, and Punch was at his side. A wild scrambling rush, a wriggle on the sill, a patter over the window-seat, and Scamp was twisting himself into white figure-eights all over the room, with tremendous energy but not a sound save the soft pad of his tiny dancing feet.

Then, as he ate, the great brown head pillowed i............