"Well, if you call missing rabbits taking after her father, I don't," remarked Wally. "As far as I can make out, her father never missed anything. It's a great pity he didn't, if you ask me, for if he had perhaps I shouldn't have had to live in a house full of bits of wild animals. I dare say there are people who like keeping their umbrellas in elephants' legs, and having gongs framed in hippo tusks, and tables made out of rhinoceros hides, and leopard skins chucked over their sofas, and heads stuck up all round the walls, but I'm not one of them, and I've never pretended that I was. You might as well live in the Natural History Museum, and be done with it."

"And the Bawtrys are coming too!" said Ermyntrude, who had paid not the least attention to this speech. "That'll make us ten, all told."

"I think Alan would like to come to the party," murmured Vicky.

Ermyntrude folded her lips for a moment. "Well, he'll have to like," she said. "I don't mean that I've got anything against him, nor his sister either, if it comes to that, but have Harold White here with the Derings and the Bawtrys I won't, and that's flat!"

"Oh, I hate Mr. White!" agreed Vicky.

"Well, ducky, I can't ask Alan and Janet without their father, now can I? I mean, you know what he is, and this being a dinner-party, and him a sort of connection of Wally's. It isn't like asking the young people over to tennis, when he wouldn't expect to be invited."

"That's right!" said Wally. "Crab poor old Harold! I thought it wouldn't be long before you started on him. I'd like to know what harm he's ever done you."

"I don't like him," said Ermyntrude. "Some people might say he's done me plenty of harm leading you into ways we won't discuss at the breakfast-table, let alone planting himself down in the Dower House."

"You never made any bones about letting it to him, did you?"