dainty in a legitimate manner, turned the jar upside down, and poured
the rose-leaves and the muffin in a heterogeneous libation upon the
Chippendale table. After a close examination of it he turned around,
holding up the food to whose buttered surface several leaves adhered in
a disordered, but determined, manner.

"Only a Persian could devour this muffin now," he said, in his rumbling,
sing-song and strangely theatrical voice, which always suggested that he
was about to deliver a couple of hundred or so lengths of blank verse.
"Omar beneath his tree perchance, or Gurustu who to Baghdad came with
steed a-foam and eyes a-flame. Wherefore do you trample upon hapless
animals that are not dumb, young man, and cause the poor astronomer to
cast his muffin upon the roses, where, mayhap, the housemaid might find
it after many days? Oh-h-h-h!"

He uttered a tremulous bass cry of mingled reproach and despair, that
sounded rather like the wail of some deplorable watchman upon a city
wall, shaking his enormous head at the Prophet the while, and flapping
his red hands slowly in the air.

"How d'you do, Sir Tiglath?" said Lady Enid, coming up to him with light
carelessness.

Sir Tiglath bowed.

"Very ill, very ill," he rumbled, looking at her furtively with his
glassy eyes. "One has had an afternoon of tragedy, an afternoon of
brawling and of disturbance, in an avenue that shall henceforth be
called accursed."