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Contents (65)
  1. THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS
  2. * * *
  3. SAKI
  4. *
  5. Contents
  6. *
  7. Introduction
  8. *
  9. Esmé
  10. *
  11. The Match-Maker
  12. *
  13. Tobermory
  14. *
  15. Mrs. Packletide's Tiger
  16. *
  17. The Stampeding of Lady Bastable
  18. *
  19. The Background
  20. *
  21. Hermann the Irascible—A Story of the Great Weep
  22. *
  23. The Unrest-Cure
  24. *
  25. The Jesting of Arlington Stringham
  26. *
  27. Sredni Vashtar
  28. *
  29. Adrian
  30. *
  31. The Chaplet
  32. *
  33. The Quest
  34. *
  35. Wratislav
  36. *
  37. The Easter Egg
  38. *
  39. Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped
  40. *
  41. The Music on the Hill
  42. *
  43. The Story of St. Vespaluus
  44. *
  45. The Way to the Dairy
  46. *
  47. The Peace Offering
  48. *
  49. The Peace of Mowsle Barton
  50. *
  51. The Talking-Out of Tarrington
  52. *
  53. The Hounds of Fate
  54. *
  55. The Recessional
  56. *
  57. A Matter of Sentiment
  58. *
  59. The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope
  60. *
  61. "Ministers of Grace"
  62. *
  63. The Remoulding of Groby Lington
  64. *
  65. * * *

"Are you sure it's one of her sayings?" asked Eleanor.

"My dear, I've heard her say it dozens of times."

"So that is where he gets his humour," said Eleanor slowly, and the hard lines deepened round her mouth.

The death of Eleanor Stringham from an overdose of chloral, occurring at the end of a rather uneventful season, excited a certain amount of unobtrusive speculation. Clovis, who perhaps exaggerated the importance of curry in the home, hinted at domestic sorrow.

And of course Arlington never knew. It was the tragedy of his life that he should miss the fullest effect of his jesting.

Sredni Vashtar

*

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.