Sometimes it was a trouser-leg that suffered. Sometimes an ankle was nipped, and if Pellico's dog occasionally got a kick in return, it was not more than his due. David remembered his own surprise when it first dawned upon him that Edward minded-yes, actually minded these encounters. He recalled the occasion when Edward, his face of a suspicious pallor, had denied angrily that he was afraid of any beastly dog, and then his sudden wincing confession that he did mind-that he minded horribly-not because he was afraid of being bitten-Edward explained this point very carefully-but because the dog made such a beastly row, and because Edward dreamed of him at night, only in his dreams, Pellico's dog was rather larger than Pellico himself, and the lane was a cul-de-sac with a wall at the end of it, against which he crouched in his dream whilst the dog came nearer and nearer.

“What rot,” was David's comment, “but if I felt like that, I jolly well know I 'd knock the brute on the head.”

“Would you?” said Edward, and that was all that had passed. Only, when a week later Pellico's dog was poisoned, David was filled with righteous indignation. He stormed at Edward.

“You did it-you know you did it. You did it with some of that beastly bug-killing stuff that you keep knocking about.”

Edward was pale, but there was an odd gleam of triumph in the eyes that met David's.

“Well, you said you 'd do for him-you said it yourself. So then I just did it.”

David stared at him with all a schoolboy's crude condemnation of something that was “not the game.”

“I 'd have knocked him on the head under old Pellico's nose-but poison-poison's beastly.”

He did not reason about it. It was just instinct. You knocked on the head a brute that annoyed you, but you did n't use poison. And Edward had used poison. That was the beginning of David's great intimacy with Elizabeth Chantrey. He did not quarrel with Edward, but they drifted out of an inseparable friendship into a relationship of the cool, go-as-you-please order. The thing rankled a little after all these years. David sat there frowning and remembering. Old Mr. Mottisfont laughed.