"That dog!" Beulah muttered, trying to scare him away with a flapping apron. "Shoo, you, Hercules! Shoo now, you hear?"

Hercules responded with another foray. Lilah had an idea.

"Here, Hercules!" she called, snapping her fingers and patting her skirt. Hercules, expecting a chicken leg, came running. Lilah scooped him up in her arms, ignored an ecstatic lick on her cheek, and thrust him at Mr. Calvert, who accepted the wriggling armful with a horrified scowl.

'I'd be ever so grateful if you'd take him to the stables and lock him in a stall. The poor dear little dog is liable to be hurt if he keeps getting underfoot." She smiled sweetly as she said it, taking a modicum of pleasure in Mr. Calvert's appalled expression. He gaped at her for a moment, but with the dog in his arms and half a dozen pairs of eyes on him there seemed little he could do but go.

As he retreated in defeat, Lilah triumphantly turned back to Mr. San Pietro. "If you like, Boot will take you in to join the company. I must go up and change."

"I'd prefer to wait for you, if I may. As your young friend pointed out, the party is for close friends and neighbors, and I fear I am neither. I confess to feeling a trifle shy. Perhaps your uncle has a room that's not in use tonight where I can wait without disturbing anyone?"

He was about as shy as a barracuda, Lilah guessed as she led the way along the passage to the house, but she was pleased that he wished to wait for her, however nonsensical his excuse. Beulah and Boot followed them. Lilah stopped at the foot of the steps leading to the house.

"My uncle's office should be empty. But you should really go on in and eat something. You said you missed supper."