fond of animals, and particularly interested in small livestock rearing from the economic point of view;in fact, one of the pamphlets on which he was at that moment engaged warmly advocated the further development of the pig and poultry industry in our rural districts; but he was pardonably unwilling to share even a commodious bedroom with samples of hen-roost and stye products.
"Wouldn't they be happier somewhere outside?" he asked, tactfully expressing his own preference in the matter in an apparent solicitude for theirs.
"There is no outside," said Vera impressively, "nothing but a waste of dark, swirling waters. The reservoir at Brinkley has burst." "I didn't know there was a reservoir at Brinkley," said Latimer.
"Well, there isn't now, it's jolly well all over the place, and as we stand particularly low we're the centre of an inland sea just at present.
You see the river has overflowed its banks as well."
"Good gracious! Have any lives been lost?"
"Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has already identified three bodies that have floated past the billiard-room window as being the young man she's engaged to. Either she's engaged to a large assortment of the population round here or else she's very careless at identification. Of course it may be the same body coming round again and again in a swirl; I hadn't thought of that."
"But we ought to go out and do rescue work, oughtn't we?" said Latimer, with the instinct of a Parliamentary candidate for getting into the local limelight.
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