another. A swaggering black ant fell on it, worried it, choked it, slew it. He was such an important, toplofty fellow that he was quite above conveying the body to the anthill. Apparently he put his feelers to his mouth and whistled, for a company of little ants appeared from nowhere, snatched it, fought over it, dragged it, trailing palely, through the grass-blades, out of sight. Wakefield was not the only spectator of the tragedy, for a strange fellow in a fuzzy yellow waistcoat and a saffron-coloured stern appeared on the rim of a burdock leaf, and stared goggle-eyed, now and again wringing his antennæ.
Wakefield did not like the looks of him. He plucked the burdock leaf and turned it upside down on top of him.
"Here endeth," he said, "the second lesson."
The peewee chanted "peewee"; the cockerel crowed.
Wakefield threw him a Chest and Lung Tablet.
"Perhaps this will help your voice," he said. "I've never heard anything so squeaky. Suck it slowly."
The cockerel bolted it, and liked the liquorice flavour so well that it came close, on the look-out for another. It was then that it espied the blackbeetle, making cumbersome attempts to reshoulder the responsibilities of life. The cockerel cocked an eye, pecked, gulped. There was no beetle in sight.
Wakefield rose, dusted his bare knees, and uttered a sigh of bliss. A third kind act, providing the cockerel with a beetle! His cup was full.
But not his stomach! It seemed hard that he, heir to the Whiteoak millions, should go empty.
He crouched before a window of the basement kitchen and peered into the twilight depths below. He could see Mrs. Wragge kneading dough, her red fists pounding it so vigorously that one could not help wondering whether it might not hurt the dough. Bessie, the kitchenmaid, was paring vegetables in a corner, her hair in her eyes. Rags, cigarette in mouth, was cleaning knives, dipping the cork first in a little puddle of water on the knife-board, then in a small mound of Bath brick, before he angrily furbished the blades. Rags was always angry when he was in the basement. No matter how cool his temper might be above, it rose to boiling point as he
