wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed
his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop
through the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close and
unstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her, but as
she began to sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on her
that she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the
tentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling with
the quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at
all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing
in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the
contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty
roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of
the Parcae Sisters.

"I can't reach her in time," gasped Octavian, "she'll be choked in the
muck. Won't you help her?"

"No one helped our cat," came the inevitable reminder.

"I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that," cried Octavian,
with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches
forward.

"Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?"

"Yes," screamed Octavian.

"Holding a candle?"

"An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?"