Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 5

thing," she said. "He won't believe that Mr. Bunny is too
quick for him; he's never caught one yet except in his dreams."

They were making their way towards the house when they heard the car
drive up to the front door, and before they reached the windows of the
dining-room, Randal Bellamy turned the corner.
Amaryllis stood apart watching with a certain curiosity the meeting of
the brothers.
The elder's face was beaming with welcome, the younger's she could
not see, but something in his bearing suggested a pleasure no less. All
she heard, however, was: "Hullo, young 'un!" and "Hullo, Bill!"
And, when they came towards her, the expression of the two faces was
that of men who, having breakfasted together, had met again at
luncheon.
"Somebody's forestalled my solemn introduction, I see," said Randal.
"Gorgon performed the ceremony," said Amaryllis.
CHAPTER IV.
COFFEE.
Randal Bellamy at fifty was the most successful patent lawyer of his
day. He had taken silk before he was forty, and for many years had
enjoyed, not only the largest practice, but a distinction unrivalled in his
own country and unsurpassed in the world.
Such a man's knowledge in physics, chemistry and biology, though less
precise, is often wider than that of the individual specialist. His
friendship with Theophilus Caldegard, begun at Cambridge, had lasted
and grown stronger with the years.
On the evening of his brother's arrival he dressed for dinner later than
was his custom. His bath had filled him with a boyish desire to whistle
and sing; and now, as he tied his bow and felt the silk-lined comfort of
his dinner-jacket, he heard with a throb of elation the soft sound of a
skirt go by his door.

He murmured as he followed:
"--lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas."
But before he reached the stairhead, all other sounds were drowned by
shouts of laughter from the billiard-room--good laughter and familiar;
but the smile left his face and his pace slackened. He was, perhaps, too
old to wake the echoes, and Dick's laugh, he thought, was infectious as
the plague.
In the wide, comfortable hall used instead of the drawing-room which
Bellamy hated, he found Amaryllis smiling with a sparkle in her eyes,
as if she too had been laughing.
"Did you hear them?" she asked.
Randal nodded.
"Father hasn't laughed like that for years--billiards!" she said. "Your
brother is just telling him shocking stories, Sir Randal."
"How d'you know?" he asked.
"I dressed as quickly as I could, and went to the billiard-room. Father
couldn't speak, but just ran me out by the scruff of the neck."
At this moment her attention was distracted by the bull-dog, sliding and
tumbling down the stairs in his eagerness to reach his mistress.
"Gorgon's behaving like a puppy," said Randal, smiling.
"Oh, he's been laughing, too," said Amaryllis, fondling the soft ears.
"And he wants to tell me all the jokes."
And then Caldegard and Dick Bellamy came down the stairs together.
"What have you been doing to Gorgon?" asked Amaryllis.
"Never mind the dog," said her father. "It's what this 'vaudeville artist'

has been doing to me!"
"Oh, Gorgon, Gorgon! If those lips could only speak!" laughed the girl.
"Don't you think Gorgon's a good name for the ugly darling, Mr.
Bellamy?" she said, as they went in to dinner.
"Surely the Gorgon was a kind of prehistoric suffragette," objected
Dick.
"There you are, Amy," said her father, and turned to him. "Your brother
and I have quite failed to convince my illiterate daughter that the word
Gorgon is of the feminine gender."
"Anyhow," said Amaryllis defiantly, as she took her seat at the
dinner-table, "I looked it up in the dictionary, and all it said was: A
monster of fearful aspect.'"
"He deserves it," said Dick.
"He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Mr. Bellamy," said the
girl.
"Dogs always do," said Randal.
"Always at the first meeting?" asked Amaryllis.
"Nearly always. But that doesn't prove that I don't travel without a
ticket when I get the chance," replied Dick.
"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
"Oh, the dog-and-baby theory's not dead yet. But I assure you, Miss
Caldegard, that the hardest case I ever met couldn't walk through a
town without collecting every dog in the place. That's why he never
succeeded in his first profession."
"What was he?" asked the girl.
"Burglar," said Dick.

"That's all very well," said his brother. "I know nothing about babies,
but I've noticed that the man whom all dogs dislike is no good at all."
"That's quite true," said Caldegard. "Remember Melchard, Amy?"
Dick Bellamy caught the quiver of disgust which passed over the girl's
face before she answered.
"Horrible person!" she said. "Trixy bit him, the dachshund next door