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 sample fountain-pen filler. One night she got rambunctious and bit the glass, and I near strangled her tryin' to make her spit it out, see. After that I put rubber over it and all was well.

"You're a homely hound, ain't you, Ada? Just a plain she-dog, just nothing, see."

Aïda had constructed this as an invitation to breakfast, and came towards the table, to be affectionately mauled.

Paul was touched by this domesticity. "There's a great deal to be said for internationalism, even in dogs," he philosophized. "Aïda may be impossible socially, but she's very human—probably more so than her prize mamma. Lines of racial demarcation will gradually get blurred as the world goes on. They'll have to, or the world won't go on. It's a pet theory of mine that we'll all end by being a family."

"You wouldn't like your grandchildren being half Chinese, would you?"

"I shouldn't mind. As far as that goes, there's no telling what our great-to-the-nth-power grandfathers may have been. It's highly probable that you and I and your Arab servant are related, if one could trace back far enough."

"Thanks be to God we can't then, for I'd brain that nigger if I found he was a relative of mine. He nearly started an Egyptian revolt when Ada stepped on his prayer-rug. She makes Abdul, my chief clerk's, life a merry hell with her poor wet nose. Don't you, old girl? Yes—we're going day-days now."

They called at a neighbouring garage for Patrick's most practical sample, a motor-cycle with a passenger seat at the rear and a basket attachment in front for Aïda, who was grovelling and baying her ecstasy in tones which, had her mother been there to hear, would have served as a mortifying reminder of her guilt.

"I'll ride you round the old burg," said Patrick, when