_Encyclopaedias_ mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuring
Carlo's tail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog's
older than you." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but
apparently he was alone in his opinion.

Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.
Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owing
to vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vagueness
in his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had
come from the north or the south side of the Tweed. This ageing friend
of Edward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his
house, and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite,
had unobtrusively come to make inquiries.

"Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog. "Did they
try to measure his tail with his hind leg?"

The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it also
had its origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what was
the best thing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had done
the worst thing. Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be got
rid of? And here he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog! With
a hysterical movement of the lower part of her leg Nellie pushed
violently against the dog--she did not kick, but she nearly
kicked--and Carlo, faintly howling a protest, fled.

Edward Henry was hurt. He escaped from between the beds and from that
close, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood by
women and disdained by infants. He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars,
whiskies, billiard-rooms and the society of masculine men-about-town.