explain them, and she taught him many and cruel, was that Cooks are
Cross.

"What shall we do now, Dam?" asked Lucille, and added, "Let's raid
the rotten nursery and rag the Haddock. Little ass! Nothing else to
do. How I _hate_ Sunday afternoon.... No work and no play. Rotten."

The Haddock, it may be stated, owed his fishy title to the fact that
he once possessed a Wealthy Relative of the name of Haddon. With
far-sighted reversionary intent his mother, a Mrs. Berners _née_
Seymour Stukeley, had christened him Haddon.

But the Wealthy Relative, on being informed of his good fortune, had
bluntly replied that he intended to leave his little all to the
founding of Night-Schools for illiterate Members of Parliament,
Travelling-Scholarships for uneducated Cabinet Ministers, and
Deportment Classes for New Radical Peers. He was a Funny Man as well
as a Wealthy Relative.

And, thereafter, Haddon Berners' parents had, as Cook put it, "up and
died" and "Grandfather" had sent for, and adopted, the orphan Haddock.

Though known to Dam and Lucille as "The Haddock" he was in reality an
utter Rabbit and esteemed as such. A Rabbit he was born, a Rabbit he
lived, and a Rabbit he died. Respectable ever. Seen in the Right
Place, in the Right Clothes, doing the Right Thing with the Right
People at the Right Time.

Lucille was the daughter of Sylvester Bethune Gavestone, the late and
lamented Bishop of Minsterbury (once a cavalry subaltern), a school,