I noticed that Pillingshot was smoking cigarettes, and asked him why.
“I’ve lost my pipe,” said Pillingshot.
He spoke without emotion.
“You appear to bear it with fortitude,” I said coldly. I hate to see a man deficient in the natural affections, and Pillingshot could not have taken it more coolly if he had lost his mother-in-law. He saw that I did not like it, and hastened to explain.
“No, no, Smith,” he said hurriedly. “It’s not that. I love my pipe passionately. In the whole course of our friendship, from the first moment that we met, we have not once fallen out. You wonder, then, why I do not mourn for its loss? I will tell you. It is because I know that that pipe will return.”
His face as he uttered these words was illumined by so soft and happy a smile that it became for the moment almost beautiful. Which, as you will admit if you ever see the normal Pillingshot, was a most remarkable phenomenon.
“Ten years ago,” he began in a dreamy, reminiscent voice, “I bought that pipe. But for Robertson—you know Robertson, the champion bore of clubland?—I might never have seen it, and when Robertson has to account for his conduct on the last day, I trust that that will be remembered in his favour. Not that he meant me to see it. He was an unconscious instrument. He was walking in front of me, and to avoid overtaking him I stopped and looked in at a tobacconist’s window. And there I saw it!”
He paused.
“It was one of those pipes,” he said, “which defy description. It was not curved exactly, nor was it precisely straight. Well, it was just a pipe. You know what I mean. I went into the shop. How well I can recall every detail of that interview. How I longed to snatch my treasure from its plush case and fly with it. But I restrained myself. I bargained with the individual behind the counter. He wore a red tie with five blue horseshoes on it, and he had forgotten to shave that morning.
“After some discussion I bought the pipe, and for one blissful fortnight, knew what perfect happiness meant. Then I went abroad, and when I landed I found to my horror that the pipe was no longer in my pocket. I advertised. I hired criers. I had the military turned out. I asked everybody I met if they had seen a pipe. Not curved or straight, I explained. Simply a pipe. At last a humble fisherman called at my hotel. With him he brought it. I heaped rewards upon him, and promised to remember him in my will. He thanked me, and said that he had found the pipe inside a shark. He said it seemed to him worth mentioning.

“About a week afterwards I went with a few friends to look at the crater of Mount Vesuvius. As I bent over the edge to get a more satisfactory look, my pipe slipped from my mouth, and fell into the abyss. Then I definitely gave up hope. I ordered a complete suit of mourning, and bought a box of a hundred cigarettes. I couldn’t bear to let any other pipe pass my lips. I felt that it would be sacrilege. One morning the landlord of the hotel came in to announce that there had been an eruption of Mount Vesuvius during the night.
“He hinted that he had arranged it all for our delectation, and hoped we would remember it in his favour. It had destroyed three villages, he said, and would we care to see it? We went, and as I walked my foot knocked against something. There was my pipe resting against a piece of lava. Slightly charred, but otherwise in excellent shape.
“It would take too long to recount all its other adventures. About this time I was captured by brigands. They took everything I possessed, my money, my watch, my clothes, my boots, and my walking-stick—everything except the pipe. I returned to England and was almost immediately run over by a motor-car. It broke my left leg and three ribs, but not my pipe. I emerged from the hospital, and accepted an invitation to shoot at a friend’s house. On the second morning a person, who, whatever his other merits, was not a good shot, picked me off at ten yards. The doctor subsequently observed that if the shot had struck me a quarter of an inch to the left it would probably have injured my pipe. Some time after——”
At this moment Harrison came in.
“Hullo, Pillingshot,” he said, “why are you smoking cigarettes?”
Pillingshot said that he had lost his pipe.
“Curious,” said Harrison, “I’ve found a pipe. It was under the seat of a first-class smoking-carriage near York. My foot knocked against it.”
“What sort of a pipe?”
“Well, it was not exactly curved. Nor was it precisely straight. It was just a pipe. Here it is.”
Pillingshot uttered a shriek of rapture and called wildly for tobacco.

As he paced the terrace after breakfast, waiting for the automobile, Keggs, the Keiths’ butler, approached.
At the beginning of his visit Keggs had inspired John with an awe amounting at times to positive discomfort. He had suffered terribly under the butler’s dignified gaze, until one morning the latter, with the air of a high-priest conferring with an underling on some point of ritual, had asked him whether in his opinion he would be doing rightly in putting his shirt on Mumblin’ Mose in a forthcoming handicap, as he had been advised to do by a metropolitan friend who claimed to be in the confidence of the trainer. John, recovering from the shock, answered in the affirmative; and a long and stately exchange of ideas on the subject of Current Form ensued. At dinner, a few days later, the butler, leaning over John to help him to sherry, murmured softly: “Romped ’ome, sir, thanking you, sir,” and from that moment had intimated by his manner that John might consider himself promoted to the rank of an equal and a friend.
“Hexcuse me, sir,” said the butler, “but Frederick, who ’as charge of your packing, desired me to ask you what arrangements you wished made with regard to the dog, sir.”
The animal in question was a beautiful bulldog, Reuben by name. John had brought him to the country at the special request of Aline, who had met him in New York and fallen an instant victim to his rugged charms.
“The dog?” he said. “Oh, yes. Tell Frederick to put his leash on. Where is he?”
“Frederick, sir?”
“No; Reuben.”
“Gruffling at ’is lordship, sir,” said Keggs tranquilly, as if he were naming some customary and recognized occupation for bulldogs.
“Gruffling at—? What!”
“ ’Is lordship, sir, ’ave climbed a tree, and Reuben is at the foot, gruffling at ’im very fierce.”
John stared.
“ ’Is lordship, sir,” continued Keggs, “ ’as halways been uncommon afraid of dogs, from boy’ood hup. I ’ad the honor to be hemployed as butler some years ago by ’is father, Lord Stockleigh, and was enabled at that time to hobserve Lord ’Erbert’s hextreme aversion for hanimals of that description. ’Is huneasiness in the presence of even ’er ladyship’s toy Pomeranian was ’ighly marked and much commented on in the servants’ ’all.”
“So you had met Lord Herbert before?”
“I was butler at the castle a matter of six years, sir.”
“Well,” said John, with some reluctance, “I guess we must get him out of that tree. Fancy being afraid of old Reuben! Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“ ’E ’ave took a huncommon dislike to ’is lordship, sir,” said Keggs.
“Where’s the tree?”
“Hat the lower end of the terrace, sir. Beyond the nood statoo, sir.”
Do take that bally dog away!John ran in the direction indicated, his steps guided by an intermittent sound as of one gargling. Presently he came in view of the tree. At the foot, with his legs well spread and his massive head raised, stood Reuben. From a branch some little distance from the ground peered down the agitated face of Lord Bertie Fendall. His lordship’s aristocratic pallor was intensified. He looked almost green.
“I say,” he called, as John appeared, “do for Heaven’s sake take that bally dog away. I’ve been up here the dickens of a time. It isn’t safe with that animal about. He’s a bally menace.”
Reuben, glancing over his shoulder, recognized his master, and, having no tail to speak of, wagged his body in a welcoming way. He looked up at Lord Bertie, and back again at John. As clearly as if he had spoken the words his eye said: “Come along, John. You and I are friends. Be a sport and pull him down out of that.”
“Take the brute away!” cried his lordship.
“He’s quite good-natured, really. He won’t hurt you.”
“He won’t get the bally chance,” replied Lord Bertie with acerbity. “Take him away.”
John stooped and grasped the dog’s collar.
“Come on, Reuben, you old fool,” he said. “We shall be missing that train.”
The automobile was already at the door when he got back. Mr. Keith was there, and Aline.
“Too bad, Barton,” said Mr. Keith, “your having to break your visit like this. You’ll come back, though? How soon, do you think?”
“Inside of two weeks, I hope,” said John. “Hammond has had these influenza attacks before. They never last long. Have you seen Reuben’s leash anywhere?”
Aline Ellison uttered a cry of anguish.
“Oh, you aren’t taking Reuben, Mr. Barton! You can’t! You mustn’t!”
John cleared his throat.
What he wanted to say was, “Miss Ellison, your lightest wish is law. I love you—and not with the weak two-by-four imitation of affection such as may be offered to you by certain knock-kneed members of the British peerage. Take Reuben. And when you look upon him, think, if but for a moment, of one who, though far away, is thinking always of you.”
What he said was: “Er, I——”
And that, mind you, was going some for John.
“Oh, thank you!” cried Aline. “Thank you so much, Mr. Barton. It’s perfectly sweet of you, and I’ll take such care of him. I won’t let him out of my sight for a minute.”
“ . . .,” said John brightly. Mathematicians do not need to be informed that “ . . . ” is the algebraical sign representing a blend of wheeze, croak, and hiccough.
And the automobile rolled off.

It was about an hour later that Lord Bertie Fendall, finding Aline seated under the shade of the trees, came to a halt beside her.
“Barton went off in the car just now, didn’t he?” he inquired casually.
“Yes,” said Aline.
Lord Bertie drew a deep breath of relief and began to buzz.
“Do you know, Miss Ellison——”
A short cough immediately behind him made him look round. His voice trailed off. His eyeglass fell with a jerk and bounded on the end of its cord. He sprang to his feet.
“Come here, Reuben,” said Aline. “What have you been doing to your nose? It’s all muddy. Aren’t you fond of dogs, Lord Herbert? I love them.”
“Eh? I beg your pardon?” said his lordship, revolving warily on his own axis, as the animal lumbered past him. “Oh, yes. Yes. That is to say—oh, yes. Very.”
Aline was removing the mud from Reuben’s nose with the corner of her pocket-handkerchief.
“Don’t you think you can generally tell a man’s character by whether dogs take to him or not? They have such wonderful instinct.”
“Wonderful,” agreed his lordship, meeting Reuben’s rolling eye and looking hastily away.
“Mr. Barton was going to take Reuben with him, but that would have been silly for such a short while, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” said Lord Bertie. “I suppose,” he went on, “he will spend most of his time in the stables and so on, don’t you know? Not in the house, I mean, don’t you know, what?”
“The idea!” cried Aline indignantly. “Reuben’s not a stable dog. I’m never going to let him out of my sight.”
“No?” said Lord Bertie, a little feverishly. “No? Oh, no. Quite so.”
“There,” said Aline, giving Reuben a push, “now you’re tidy. What were you saying, Lord Herbert?”
Reuben moved a step forward and wheezed slightly.
“Saying?” said his Lordship, backing. “Oh, yes. Yes, I was saying—good dog! Good old fellow! I was saying—would you excuse me, Miss Ellison,—good dog, then!—I have just recollected an important—there’s a good boy!—an important letter I meant to have written.”
The announcement of his proposed departure may have been somewhat abrupt, but at any rate no fault could be found with his manner of leaving. It was ceremonious in the extreme. He moved out of her presence backwards, as if she had been royalty.
Aline saw him depart with a slightly aggrieved feeling. She had been in the mood for company. For some reason which she could not define she was conscious of quite a sensation of loneliness. It was absurd to think that John’s departure could have caused this. And yet somehow it did leave a blank. Perhaps it was because he was so big and silent. You grew used to his being there just as you grew used to the scenery, and you missed him when he was gone. That was all. If the Metropolitan tower were removed, one would feel lonely in Madison Square.

Lord Bertie, meanwhile, having reached the smoking room, where he proposed to brood over the situation with the assistance of a series of cigarettes, found Keggs there, arranging the New York morning papers on a side table. He flung himself into an armchair, and, with a scowl at the butler’s back, struck a match.
“I ’ope your lordship is suffering no hill effects from the adventure?” said Keggs, finishing the disposal of the papers.
“What?” said Lord Bertie coldly. He disliked Keggs.
“I was halluding to your lordship’s encounter with the dog Reuben this morning.”
Lord Bertie started.
“What do you mean?”
“I observed that your lordship ’ad climbed a tree to elude the hanimal.”
“You saw it?”
Keggs bowed.
“Then why the devil, you silly old idiot,” demanded his lordship explosively, “didn’t you come and take the brute away?”
It had been the practice in the old days both of Lord Bertie and of his father to address the butler in moments of agitation with a certain aristocratic vigor.
“I ’ardly liked to hinterfere, your lordship, beyond hinforming Mr. Barton. The hanimal being ’is.”
Lord Bertie flung his cigarette out of the window and kicked a footstool. Keggs regarded these evidences of an overwrought soul sympathetically.
“I can happreciate your lordship’s emotion,” he said, “knowing ’ow haverse to dogs your lordship ’as always been. It seems only yesterday,” he continued reminiscently, “ that your lordship, then a boy at Heton, ’ome for the ’olidays, ’anded me a package of Rough on Rats, and hinstructed me to poison ’er ladyship your mother’s toy Pomeranian with it.”
Lord Bertie started for the second time since he had entered the room. He screwed his eyeglass firmly into his eye and looked keenly at the butler. Keggs’ face was expressionless. Lord Bertie coughed. He looked round at the door. It was closed.
“You didn’t do it,” he said.
“The honorarium which your lordship hoffered,” said the butler deprecatingly, “was only six postage stamps and a ’arf share in a white rat. I did not consider it hadequate in view of the undoubted riskiness of the proposed hact.”
“You’d have done it if I had offered more?”
“That, your lordship, it is himpossible to say after this lapse of time.”
The Earl of Stockleigh had at one time the idea of attaching his son and heir to the diplomatic service. Lord Bertie’s next speech may supply some clue to his father’s reasons for abandoning that scheme.