She's a Mrs. Stroope."
"_Mrs_.?" queried Jerton.
"Yes, she's the Lady Champion at golf in my part of the world. An awful
good sort, and goes about a good deal in Society, but she has an awkward
habit of losing her memory every now and then, and gets into all sorts of
fixes. She's furious, too, if you make any allusion to it afterwards.
Good day, sir."
The stranger passed on his way, and before Jerton had had time to
assimilate his information he found his whole attention centred on an
angry-looking lady who was making loud and fretful-seeming inquiries of
the hotel clerks.
"Has any luggage been brought here from the station by mistake, a dress-
basket and dressing-case, with the name Kestrel-Smith? It can't be
traced anywhere. I saw it put in at Victoria, that I'll swear. Why--there
is my luggage! and the locks have been tampered with!"
Jerton heard no more. He fled down to the Turkish bath, and stayed there
for hours.
THE STALLED OX
Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force of
environment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranche or a
dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool,
and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted district
that only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side of
his garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an
enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of the
Channel Island persuasion.
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