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THE GOLDEN AGE 'There, never mind his teeth,' interrupted the curate rudely; 'there's too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have done.'

'I was in a frighful funk,' continued the narrator, warily guarding his ear with his hand, 'but just then the drawing-room window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out—I mean emerged. The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid implications!'

The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might really have seen something. How was the poor man to know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint—that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?

'Why did you not alarm the house?' he asked.

' ' Cos I was afraid,' said Harold sweetly, 'that p'raps they mightn't believe me!'

'But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?' put in Aunt Maria.

Harold was hard pressed—by his own flesh and blood, too! 102