“NOW, I’ll tell Mis. Vernon, if you do dem tricks. Stop.”

“Why, he’s perfectly harmless, Minerva. Look, I’m holding him.”

“Don’ you let him get at me. Mah goodness, he has a head like a horse. Ooh, Lawdy, where’s he gone?”

It was raining and Ethel and I were in the sitting room when we heard these loud words and then Minerva burst into the room.

She had her skirts held at a height that would have been all right for ballet dancing, but Minerva is not a ballet dancer and Ethel bade her remember herself.

Now it seemed to me that that was exactly what she was doing. Fright is memory of self as nearly as I can make out, and Minerva was evidently frightened at a new animal that “looked like a horse.”

I had a mental picture of a pony that James had smuggled into the kitchen and then I remembered that New York was not a stranger to ponies and that perhaps in her childhood Minerva might have ridden a pony in Central Park or at Coney Island. No, it must be some other beast.

“What is the matter. Don’t you see that Mr. Vernon is reading to me?”

“But it jumped at me!”

“What jumped at you?” said I sternly. If there is anything that I dislike it is to be interrupted when I am reading. If interruptions ever came in the midst of prosy descriptions I would not mind it at all. I could even stand it in the midst of a digression (like the present one), but interrupters have the uncanny knack of timing their breaks so that just as the author has led up to a brilliant mot and the moment is psychologically perfect, they say their little say and when the reading is resumed the humour or the wit of the sentence has evaporated.

James now appeared in the doorway.

“What jumped at Minerva, James?”

“It was on’y a grasshopper, sir. Never saw anyone afraid of a grasshopper before.”

“Why, Minerva!” said Ethel. “You said it looked like a horse.”

James, with a chuckle, stooped and picked something from the floor. It bent its legs for a spring as he put his hand down and again Minerva screamed. It leaped with a thud against his palm and he held it between thumb and forefinger and said,

“She’s right. It does look like a horse.”

I had never noticed the resemblance before, but there was no gainsaying it, once our attention had been called to it. I imagine that if the head were increased to horse size and the body and legs were in proportion, it would be a more formidable looking beast than the hyena. And if a hyena were reduced to grasshopper size he would be as “cute” as a caterpillar.

“Minerva,” said Ethel, “sit down. You may go, James. I wish you would not scare Minerva.”

“Never thought she’d scare so easy, Mrs. Vernon,” said he respectfully. He was always respectful. He went o............