at the vicarage.

"Please sir, there's Simon Gunn's cat in the sparrergrass." The
information was accompanied by a sort of chuckle of evil satisfaction
which at once roused the sleeping passions of the Reverend Augustin
Ambrose.

"Dear me, Reynolds, then why don't you turn her out?" and without waiting
for an answer, the excellent vicar would spring from his seat and rush
down the lawn in the direction of the beds, closely followed by the
Honourable Cornelius, who picked up stones from the gravel path as he
ran, and whose long legs made short work of the iron fence at the bottom
of the garden. Meanwhile the aged Reynolds let Carlo loose from the yard
and the hunt was prosecuted with great boldness and ingenuity. The
vicar's object was to get the cat out of the asparagus bed as soon as
possible without hurting her, for he was a humane man and would not have
hurt a fly. Cornelius, on the other hand, desired the game to last as
long as possible, and endeavoured to prevent the cat's escape by always
hitting the wire netting at the precise spot where she was trying to get
over it. In this way he would often succeed in getting as much as half an
hour's respite from Horace. At last the vicar, panting with his exertions
and bathed in perspiration, would protest against the form of assault.

"Really, Angleside", he would say, "I believe I could throw straighter
myself. I'm quite sure Carlo can get her out if you leave him alone".

Whereupon Cornelius would put his hands in his pockets and look on, and
in a few minutes, when the cat had been driven out and the vicar's back
was turned, he would slip a sixpence into old Reynold's hand, and follow
his tutor reluctantly back to the study. Whether there was any connection