"They used to be; that's what makes them all the more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper inside her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one's bosom has been utilised as a snake sanatorium."

"But what has happened? Has some one been making mischief?"

"Not exactly," exclaimed Clovis; "a hen came between them."

"A hen? What hen?"

"It sometimes was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and Dora sold it to Henrietta at a rather exotic price. They both go in for prize poultry, you know, and Henrietta thought she was going to get her money back in a large family of pedigree chickens. The bird turned out to be an abstainer from the egg habit, and I'm told that the letters which passed between the two women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on to a sheet of notepaper."

"How ridiculous!" exclaimed Mrs. Sangrail. "Couldn't some of their friends compose the quarrel?"

"People tried," exclaimed Clovis, "but it must have been rather like composing the storm music of the `Fliegende Hollander.' Jane was willing to take back some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take back the hen, but Dora exclaimed that would be owning herself in the wrong, and you know she'd as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as do that."