THE PERFECT DOG Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round, bright eyes for worms.

Between the bench where he was sitting and the spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women, children of all kinds.

Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their forms and plumage with her own.

'If I had had the breeding of you,' she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist of it than that.

A worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round.