Nobby tried to save himself by reaching for Berry’s shoulder with his forepaws, but at the critical moment his buffer flinched, the paws fell short of their objective, and with a startled grunt the terrier fell heavily into the bath, his desperate claws leaving two long abrasions upon his victim’s ribs.

The scene that followed baffles description.

Berry began to roar like a wounded bull, while a bedraggled Nobby scrambled and blew and slipped and scratched, caring not at all what was his understanding, so long as it provided a foothold and kept his head above water.

“He thinks I’m a straw!” yelled Berry.  “He’s catching at me.  Don’t stand there like a half-baked corner-boy.  Get him out!”

But I was helpless with laughter, from which I only recovered in time to rescue the offender, who, with the bath to himself, was swimming sturdily in the deep water and scrabbling fruitlessly on the porcelain, while Berry, in a bath-dressing-gown and a loud voice, identified and enumerated the several scratches upon his person.

“For Heaven’s sake,” said I, “go and answer the telephone.”

“I shall die,” said Berry, slipping his feet into a pair of pumps.  “I shall get pneumonia (bis) and die.  I got into that bath in the prime, as it were, the very heyday of life.  And now....  At least, I shall be in the fashion.  ’The body of the deceased bore signs of extreme physical violence.’  Any more for the crime wave?”

I wrapped Nobby in my brother-in-law’s towel and followed the latter downstairs.

My sister was standing in the library’s doorway.

“What on earth,” she demanded, “has been the matter?”

I held up my hand.

“Listen.”

Berry was speaking upon the telephone.

“Is that the Waddell Institute?  I am so very sorry—­I might almost say distracted—­that you should have been kept waiting....  You see, I’ve just been mauled....  No.  Not ‘called,’ mauled.  Emma, ak, u, l for leather—­I beg your pardon.  Yes, isn’t it tawful?  Well, if you must know, it was a bloodhound.  They told me at the Dogs’ Home that he’d lost his scent as a result of the air raids, but last night the charwoman gave him a sausage I’d left, and he pulled me down this morning....  Yes.  This is Major Pleydell....  Oh, Walter Thomas Dale?  Yes, I remember perfectly....  Received the requisite number of votes?  Splendid....  Can be admitted on the fifteenth of June?  Thanks very much....  What?...  Oh, I shall pull round.  Yes, thanks.  I shall just get the wounds plugged, and....  Good-bye.”

We heard the receiver replaced.

“Hurray!” cried Daphne.  “I am glad.  That’s a real load off my mind.  Write and tell them this morning, will you?” I looked up from the operation of drying Nobby and nodded.  “Poor people, they’ll be so thankful.  And now, what happened upstairs?”

“Mixed bathing,” said I.  “Your husband had not left the bath when Nobby entered it.  Both were frightened, but neither was hurt.”