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Clovis, who was temporarily and unwillingly a paying guest at the villa, had been dozing in a hammock at the far end of the garden when Mrs. Momeby had broken the news to him. "We've lost Baby," she screamed. "Do you mean that it's dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at cards and lost it that way?" asked Clovis lazily. "He was toddling about quite happily on the lawn," said Mrs.
Momeby, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure as well. She was again interrupted. "There is no such thing as rheumatism," said Miss Gilpet. She said it with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced claret in the wine-list is no more.
"If the hyaena was really hungry and not merely toying with his food there wouldn't be much in the way of remains. It would be like the small-boy-and-apple story there ain't going to be no core." Mrs. Momeby turned away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some other direction.
"That, I think, is for you to explain," said Mrs. Momeby stiffly. "Obviously," said Clovis, "it's a duplicate Erik that your powers of faith called into being. The question is: What are you going to do with him?" The ashen pallor deepened in Rose-Marie's cheeks. Mrs.
Momeby clutched the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a bowl of gold-fish. "I found him sitting in the middle of the road," said Rose-Marie weakly. "You can't take him back and leave him there," said Clovis; "the highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for disused miracles."
Momeby was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the ninetieth time of telling as in the first. "Arnold had just come in; he was complaining of rheumatism " "There are so many things to complain of in this household that it would never have occurred to me to complain of rheumatism," murmured Clovis. "He was complaining of rheumatism," continued Mrs.
Momeby tearfully, "and Arnold had just come in, and I was asking him what sort of sauce he would like with the asparagus " "I hope he said hollandaise," interrupted Clovis, with a show of quickened interest, "because if there's anything I hate " "And all of a sudden I missed Baby," continued Mrs. Momeby in a shriller tone.
Think what a sensational headline it would make in the local papers: 'Infant son of prominent Nonconformist devoured by spotted hyaena. Your husband isn't a prominent Nonconformist, but his mother came of Wesleyan stock, and you must allow the newspapers some latitude." "But we should have found his remains," sobbed Mrs. Momeby.
Momeby; the preference which the child was showing for its dust and buttercup distractions was so marked that the question struck Clovis as being unnecessarily tactless. "Give him a ride on the roly-poly," suggested the father brilliantly, as the howls continued with no sign of early abatement.
"I feel sure that a hyaena has not eaten him," she said lamely. "The hyaena may be equally certain that it has. You see, it may have just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the present whereabouts of the baby." Mrs. Momeby was in tears again. "If you have faith," she sobbed, struck by a happy inspiration, "won't you find our little Erik for us?
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