To himself Wolf explained this ambiguous remark by assuming that Mr. Urquhart had been secretly propitiating “the drunken individual at Pond Cottage” by disparaging to him his new secretary.

But the poet began again. “I don’t like the way some people egg on that young fool Weevil to boast so grandly of what lecherous things he’s done. When people encourage an idiot like that, it’s bad for everybody. It puts it into his head to play tricks he’d never dare to think out for himself.”

“Ho! Ho!” thought Wolf. “What’s up now? Now we’re beginning to learn something really curious!”

And the poet continued, in an excited voice: “You married people think you know everything. But no man ever knows what these girls are after; and I doubt if they know it themselves! It’s like a gadfly, that first tickles them and then stings them.”

“What’s like a gadfly?” enquired Wolf.