then to return and report progress. He departed on his mission
gaily; but his absence was short, and his return, discomfited and
in tears, seemed to betoken some want of parts for diplomacy. He
had found Edward, it appeared, pacing the orchard, with the sort
of set smile that mountebanks wear in their precarious antics,
fixed painfully on his face, as with pins. Harold had opened
well, on the rabbit subject, but, with a fatal confusion between
the abstract and the concrete, had then gone on to remark that
Edward's lop-eared doe, with her long hindlegs and contemptuous
twitch of the nose, always reminded him of Sabina Larkin (a nine-
year-old damsel, child of a neighbouring farmer): at which point
Edward, it would seem, had turned upon and savagely maltreated
him, twisting his arm and punching him in the short ribs. So
that Harold returned to the rabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn
wails: anon wishing, with sobs, that he were a man, to kick his
love-lorn brother: anon lamenting that ever he had been born.

I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had
to console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of
the donkey-cart--a luscious treat that had been specially
reserved for me, a week past, by the gardener's boy, for putting
in a good word on his behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold
was soon all smiles and grease; and I was not, on the whole,
dissatisfied with the significant hint that had been gained as to
the fons at origo mali.

Fortunately, means were at hand for resolving any doubts on the
subject, since the morning was Sunday, and already the bells were
ringing for church. Lest the connexion may not be evident at
first sight, I should explain that the gloomy period of church-