Page:Rudyard Kipling - A diversity of creatures.djvu/145

Rh stage, take them home, and patch them up till they were sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again—with an appetite. Of course, no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.'

'Strictly legitimate—highly respectable,' I said. 'But what a life for the daughter!'

'Mustn't it have been! Now d'you realise what you said just now?'

'Perfectly; and now you've made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?' When we reached it they were all inside, sitting on committee of names.

'What shall you call yours?' I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.

'Harvey,' she replied—'Harvey's Sauce, you know. He's going to be quite saucy when I've'—she saw Mrs. Godfrey and me coming through the French window—'when he's stronger.'

Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I thought of the name.

'Oh, splendid,' I said at random. 'H with an A, A with an R, R with a'

'But that's Little Bingo,' some one said, and they all laughed.

Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, 'You ought always to verify your quotations.'

It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word 'quotation' set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory's reach as a cat sits