and applause from the retreating figure of Groby Lington, he
found that the monkey had also discreetly retired, while his
clothes were scattered on the grass at the foot of the tree.

  ``They'm two ipes, that's what they be,'' he muttered
angrily, and if his judgment was severe, at least he spoke
under the sting of considerable provocation.

  It was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave
notice, having been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak
of sudden temper on the part of the master anent some under
done cutlets.  ``'E gnashed 'is teeth at me, 'e did reely,''
she informed a sympathetic kitchen audience.

  ``I'd like to see 'im talk like that to me, I would,''
said the cook defiantly, but her cooking from that moment
showed a marked improvement.

  It was seldom that Groby Lington so far detached himself
from his accustomed habits as to go and form one of a
house-party, and he was not a little piqued that Mrs.
Glenduff should have stowed him away in the musty old
Georgian wing of the house, in the next room, moreover, to
Leonard Spabbink, the eminent pianist.

  ``He plays Liszt like an angel,'' had been the hostess's
enthusiastic testimonial.

  ``He may play him like a trout for all I care,'' had been
Groby's mental comment, ``but I wouldn't mind betting that
be snores.  He's just the sort and shape that would.  And if
I hear him snoring through those ridiculous thin-panelled
walls, there'll be trouble.''

  He did, and there was.

  Groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and
then made his way through the corridor into Spabbink's room.
Under Groby's vigorous measures the musicians flabby,
redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness
like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg.  Groby
prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish
self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped
his domineering visitant on the hand.  In another moment
Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually
gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while
his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed and smacked,
pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can progress
across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose
utterly inadequate depths Groby perseveringly strove to
drown him.  For a few moments the room was almost in
darkness: Groby's candle had overturned in an early stage of
the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely reached to the spot
where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and splutterings,
and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that was
being waged round the shores of the bath.  A few instants
later the one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare
of blazing curtains and rapidly kindling panelling.

  When the hastily aroused members of the house-party
stampeded out on to the lawn, the Georgian wing was well
alight and belching forth masses of smoke, but some moments
elapsed before Groby appeared with the half-drowned pianist
in his arms, having just bethought him of the superior
drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the
lawn.  The cool night air sobered his rage, and when he
found that he was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer
of poor Leonard Spabbink, and loudly commended for his
presence of mind in tying a wet cloth round his head to
protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted the
situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his
finding the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his
side and the conflagration well started.  Spabbink gave his
version some days later, when he had partially recovered
from the shock of his midnight castigation and immersion,
but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive comments with
which his story was greeted warned him that the public ear
was not at his disposal.  He refused, however, to attend the
ceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society's
life-saving medal.

  It was about this time that Groby's pet monkey fell a
victim to the disease which attacks so many of its kind when
brought under the influence of a northern climate.  Its
master appeared to be profoundly affected by its loss, and
never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had
recently attained.  In company with the tortoise, which
Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters
about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his
erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are
fairly well justified in alluding to him as ``Old Uncle
Groby.''

[End of The Chronicles of Clovis]
.