"I thought that out there you were always prepared for emergency guests
turning up," said Annabel.

"I was quite prepared for half a dozen Bishops," said Matilda, "but it
was rather disconcerting to find out after a little conversation that
this particular one was a distant cousin of mine, belonging to a branch
of the family that had quarrelled bitterly and offensively with our
branch about a Crown Derby dessert service; they got it, and we ought to
have got it, in some legacy, or else we got it and they thought they
ought to have it, I forget which; anyhow, I know they behaved
disgracefully. Now here was one of them turning up in the odour of
sanctity, so to speak, and claiming the traditional hospitality of the
East."

"It was rather trying, but you could have left your husband to do most of
the entertaining."

"My husband was fifty miles up-country, talking sense, or what he
imagined to be sense, to a village community that fancied one of their
leading men was a were-tiger."

"A what tiger?"

"A were-tiger; you've heard of were-wolves, haven't you, a mixture of
wolf and human being and demon? Well, in those parts they have
were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far
as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for
thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three
hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our