Page:Rudyard Kipling - A diversity of creatures.djvu/169

Rh deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who was being out-argued.

'Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself de trop where he was,' I said. 'And she hasn't sent after him. You'd better save Bettina before they kill her.'

'There's been enough lying about that dog,' said Mrs. Godfrey to me. 'If he wasn't born in lies, he was baptized in 'em. D'you know why she called him Harvey? It only occurred to me in those dreadful days when I was ill, and one can't keep from thinking, and thinks everything. D'you know your Boswell? What did Johnson say about Hervey—with an e?'

'Oh, that's it, is it?' I cried incautiously. 'That was why I ought to have verified my quotations. The spelling defeated me. Wait a moment, and it will come back. Johnson said: "He was a vicious man, I began. But very kind to me," Mrs. Godfrey prompted. Then, both together, If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him.

'So you were mixed up in it. At any rate, you had your suspicions from the first? Tell me,' she said.

'Ella,' I said, 'I don't know anything rational or reasonable about any of it. It was all—all woman-work, and it scared me horribly.'

'Why?' she asked.

That was six years ago. I have written this tale to let her know—wherever she may be.