He had an infinite genius for getting into trouble. Not in the
delightfully normal fashion of the average growing boy; but in
furtively crafty ways that did not belong to healthy childhood.
Day by day, Cyril impressed his odd personality more and more on
everything around him. The atmosphere of sweet peace which had
brooded, like a blessing, over the whole Place, was dispersed.
The cook,--a marvel of culinary skill and of long service, gave
tearful warning, and departed. This when she found the insides of
all her cooking utensils neatly soaped; and the sheaf of
home-letters in her work-box replaced by cigar-coupons.
One of the workmen threw over his job with noisy blasphemy; when
his room above the stables was invaded by stealth and a
comic-paper picture of a goat's head substituted for his dead
mother's photograph in the well-polished little bronze frame on
his bureau.
And so on, all along the line.
The worst and most continuous sufferer from Cyril's loathed
presence on the Place was the massive collie, Lad.
The child learned, on the first day of his visit, that it would
be well-nigh as safe to play with a handful of dynamite as with
Lad's gold-and-white mate, Lady.
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