Young Duckby, whom he mildly disliked, speedily monopolised the general attention by an account of a domestic bereavement.

“Had four young pigeons carried off last night by a whacking big rat. Oh, a monster he must have been; you could tell by the size of the hole he made breaking into the loft.”

No moderate-sized rat ever seemed to carry out any predatory operations in these regions; they were all enormous in their enormity.

“Pretty hard lines that,” continued Duckby, seeing that he had secured the attention and respect of the company; “four squeakers carried off at one swoop. You’d find it rather hard to match that in the way of unlooked-for bad luck.”

“I had six pullets out of a pen of seven killed by a snake yesterday afternoon,” said Blenkinthrope, in a voice which he hardly recognised as his own.

“By a snake?” came in excited chorus.