The soft shimmering lengths of this elegant accessory had attracted the attention of the ever-alert Beelzebub, who had quietly abstracted it as it hung negligently from its owner’s chair, and by a process of “little and often” had conscientiously given to each individual feather a separate and independent existence.

Gibbon’s horrified gaze, attracted by the lady’s excusable agitation, rested on his graceless quadruped snoozing amid the ruin of fluffiness like an eider-duckling in its nest. “No marvel that the lady wept,” or would have if consideration for her complexion had not prevailed, and Beelzebub’s owner hastened to gasp out a little hurricane of apologies and enquiries as to the estimated cost of the damage.