chocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there with gay tinsel-like
wrappings or the glistening mauve of crystallised violets. It was as
though the fairy paradise of a greedyminded child had taken shape and
substance in the vegetation of the meadow. Octavian's bloodmoney had
been flung back at him in scorn.

To increase his discomfiture the march of events tended to shift the
blame of ravaged chicken-coops from the supposed culprit who had already
paid full forfeit; the young chicks were still carried off, and it seemed
highly probable that the cat had only haunted the chicken-run to prey on
the rats which harboured there. Through the flowing channels of servant
talk the children learned of this belated revision of verdict, and
Octavian one day picked up a sheet of copy-book paper on which was
painstakingly written: "Beast. Rats eated your chickens." More ardently
than ever did he wish for an opportunity for sloughing off the disgrace
that enwrapped him, and earning some happier nickname from his three
unsparing judges.

And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-old
daughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till one
o'clock with her father while the nursemaid gobbled and digested her
dinner and novelette. About the same time the blank wall was usually
enlivened by the presence of its three small wardens. Octavian, with
seeming carelessness of purpose, brought Olivia well within hail of the
watchers and noted with hidden delight the growing interest that dawned
in that hitherto sternly hostile quarter. His little Olivia, with her
sleepy placid ways, was going to succeed where he, with his anxious well-
meant overtures, had so signally failed. He brought her a large yellow
dahlia, which she grasped tightly in one hand and regarded with a stare
of benevolent boredom, such as one might bestow on amateur classical