Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden

might inflict. And he plunged like a mad horse ! At last the welcome climax, and a perfect deluge of kisses bitten hard into his olive neck. And then the luxurious confession with which this story be- gan. Left to himself, Clayton invented incidentally twenty-three quite new curses, called Le W... a lit- tle bitch, kissed the mark of the little bitch’s teeth on his hand, and generally conducted himself as an officer and a gentleman would do, provided he were also a devout Christian. He foresaw trou- ble. It came pretty quickly. Two days afterwards Clayton had to quit his lover’s room in a great hurry, as heavy footsteps trod the passage. The Captain was in his dressing-gown and proved quite Arcadian beneath. He was in bed in a jiffy, and discovered heat and moisture to an extent unwar- ranted by the climate. “ I thought you would never come, love,” sighed the charming middy, with re- sourceful tact, “ so I’ve been whiling away the time.” “ I’m here now,” said his lover, and applied his lips to the dark altar of his desire. That was very moist too, and the Captain’s inquisitive tongue soon pene- trated its secrecies and became aware of a strong warm taste as of incense recently offered. “ I envy you your amusement,” he observed, with delicate irony, “ you appear to have succeeded at last in fol- lowing my advice to go and bugger yourself ! ” He said no more just then, but came round with a sharp knife two days later to both the lovers and said he thought their accomplishments, if unique, were unnatural. But the knife cut both knots at once ; he told Lord Cartington at their tête-à-tête dinner the next day that there seemed to be no end to the variety of entrees which had as a basis — oysters. “ Katie ” Ambrose grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with god and man. [85]