Date: 1911-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Humor; Short Fiction; Edwardian Fiction; Home life
Description: Eliza is long-suffering and intelligent, her husband is a pompous prig and a self-regarding idiot, in “some of the funniest stories in the English language” … ~ ~ ~ ~ “A gentle, yet deliciously humourous series of brief anecdotes, that follow the mundane, though surprisingly hazard-strewn lives of our rather pompous main character, and his long-suffering wife, Eliza.” (— Nigel Boydell at Librivox) ~ ~ ~ ~ Barry Pain’s comedic “Eliza” stories are perhaps his best-known works. The sequence is comprised of the collections “Eliza”, “Eliza’s Husband”, “Eliza Getting On”, “Exit Eliza”, and “Eliza’s
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA

EXIT  ELIZA

BARRY PAIN

MobileRead Edition
2022

Eliza is long-suffering and intelligent, her husband is a pompous prig and a self-regarding idiot, in “some of the funniest stories in the English language” …

“A gentle, yet deliciously humourous series of brief anecdotes, that follow the mundane, though surprisingly hazard-strewn lives of our rather pompous main character, and his long-suffering wife, Eliza.”
(— Nigel Boydell at Librivox)

Barry Pain’s comedic “Eliza” stories are perhaps his best-known works. The sequence is comprised of the collections Eliza, Eliza’s Husband, Eliza Getting On, Exit Eliza, and Eliza’s Son. These stories are often compared to the Weedon brothers’ Diary of a Nobody (1888-89) [praised by Evelyn Waugh as “the funniest book in the world.”]

Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, he was perhaps best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories, but now is also noted for his tales touched with fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. He also wrote stories of mystery and suspense. His humor has been characterized by some modern critics as “a surreal forerunner to Monty Python.”

Exit Eliza was first published in 1912. The bonus story “Eliza and the Special” was first published in 1915. This collection is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS

… Cover

… Titlepage / About

EXIT ELIZA

Reflections on the Child
The Average Adjuster
Sampson
Three Stamps
Bridge Abandoned
An Extraordinary Occurrence
The Garden Fête
The Letter to “The Times”
The Cockroach
The Duke of Coverdale
A Failure in Economy
The Photograph
Supply and Demand
The Watch
Cigarettes and Ashes
The Wasps
Four Quarts
Menial Work
An Independent Opinion
The Unexpected Visit

[BONUS STORY]
Eliza and the Special

EXIT ELIZA

REFLECTIONS ON THE CHILD

I said a few words on this subject to Eliza, and she replied that if I only wanted to cast reflections on the child I had better hold my tongue altogether.

“On the contrary, and far from it,” I said. “I want nothing of the kind. Any man who says I am deficient in the proper feelings of a father merely proves himself to be an ignorant fool. I wish to face the facts, Eliza — that’s all, and there’s no occasion to get short about it.”

The truth is that the arrival of a son and heir in a gentleman’s family is not all skittles, I have found in business that the more a thing looks like being all skittles the more it isn’t. It is just the same in the home. At first, of course, the congratulations of one’s friends were welcome, and there were presentations to the child of a gratifying nature. After the notice (in the best newspapers) advertising the birth, a perfect deluge of samples and circulars descended upon us. Of different kinds of meat extracts alone so many samples were sent that for over a week clear soup at dinner became simply a matter of course. All satisfactory enough as far as it goes, but is it everything? What about character?

The fact of the case is there is absolutely no dependence to be placed on baby. I do not blame him. His is, perhaps, a common fault of infancy, and I am always ready to forgive and forget. But to me on more than one occasion he has been most disappointing. You never know where you are with him. I had, for instance, found out by repeated experiments that if I waved one finger slowly in front of his face at a distance of, say, eleven or twelve inches, he at once gave a particularly winning and sunny smile. Naturally, I was anxious to exhibit this small accomplishment. It seemed to me to indicate the early working of the mind. An opportunity arrived when Miss Sakers asked of her own accord to have the child brought down. I mentioned this phenomenon to her.

“I will show you,” I said. “I will wave my finger over the child’s face, and you will see the result.”

I waved my finger over the child’s face. The child was immediately sick.

The thing is a mystery to me. Here we have an infant in robust health. He sleeps well, has a hearty appetite, and rarely cries. But any attempt to exhibit him to a visitor only too frequently has the unpleasant result indicated. It almost seems as if he did it maliciously. At any rate, it is a course of action which is bound to create a totally wrong impression. Miss Sakers said that if she had known she would have stopped me, and that it was not right to treat a baby like that. I kept my temper, as I almost invariably do when speaking to a lady. But it is not pleasant to me to be accused of stupidity and cruelty, and that is what her observation comes to.

It seems to me that the stupidity lies principally with other people. Baby has at present five wool balls and two rabbits. One wool ball and one rabbit would have been ample, and the money spent on the others might have been more usefully employed. Before giving a present to a baby it is obviously wise to consult some responsible person, such as the father, to know what is required. Some slight addition to the child’s wardrobe would have given it at least as much pleasure — both the rabbits and one of the wool balls cause it extreme terror — and would have saved me expense.

Then, again, though it may be less the fault of the baby than of Eliza herself, I have practically ceased to be master in my own house. A girl of seventeen has been engaged by us to assist Eliza in the care of the child. The other day, as I entered the room, that chit of a girl held up her finger at me, and said “Hush!” The word “please” was not used. Eliza said that she was justified, the child being asleep at the time and the girl in a hurry. Am I nobody, then? However, I make no comment.

The same girl has practically forbidden me on one occasion to enter a room in my own house — “You don’t go in there, sir,” was the expression used — and has also told me to take off my boots, on the Senne that they squeaked. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I did not take off the boots. In fact, I told the girl that I paid her wages to attend to the baby, and not to interfere with matters that were beyond her province.

The other day Eliza was talking to the baby, and I heard her say, “You’ll be a finer man than your father, won’t you?”

“I do not wish to use any strong expression, Eliza,” I said, “but that remark of yours is absolutely idiotic, besides being offensive to me personally. You are speaking of what you cannot possibly know, and you are saying it to a child who cannot possibly understand it.”

“Then,” said Eliza, “if baby can’t understand, it don’t matter if I’m wrong; and anyway, I’m right. A much finer man you’ll be than your father, ducksey, won’t you?”

It is hopeless to contend against this kind of thing. I will on say that it wounds me. We will pass to another point.

I like order in my house. I like my servants to do their work properly. I like punctuality at my meals. So far, I have insisted upon these three things, and been able to secure them. That is all quite a thing of the past now. It is of no use for me to say anything. If I do, the baby is always brought in as an excuse; and if I decline to accept the baby as an excuse, then I am considered to be a brute. The other morning my shaving water was not hot, and the eggs at breakfast were boiled as hard as a stone. When I ventured upon a word of reproof to Parker about this she looked injured and said that the baby had slept longer than usual that morning, and that it was not possible to do everything. I defy any man to prove any possible connection between the length of a baby’s sleep and the length of time that an egg is boiled. They are two different things altogether. Here am I with one extra servant in the house, and with less comfort than I have ever had before. Is that disgraceful, or is it not? That is all that I ask.

Those of my readers who are acquainted with my previous volumes of domestic memoirs will probably have been struck by one strong characteristic of mine — I will not allow myself to be placed in an absurd and ignominious position. I have a sense of my own personal dignity, and I am not ashamed of it. It is something altogether distinct from vanity, a fault which I despise. This characteristic of mine has at any rate saved me in one respect. I may not be master in my own house, but I have definitely declined to wheel the perambulator.

I did it once, and once only. It was on a Saturday afternoon, and I noticed that I seemed to attract more than usual attention. Small boys in the street stared at me and then ran off and fetched other boys to have a look. Presently I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in a shop-window. It was enough. “This,” I said to Eliza, “will not happen again.”

Eliza was not pleased with my decision. She says that in asking me to wheel a perambulator she is really conferring an honour upon me. Into such extravagances may maternity lead a woman.

“There is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything,” I ventured to remind her. “When we take our walk on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, the proper course is for the nursemaid to wheel the perambulator and for you and me to walk beside it.”

“Oughtn’t the other girl to run behind and bark?” asked Eliza.

I declined to make any reply to foolishness of this kind. Here am I by my own unaided exertions practically in the position of manager to a city firm of the highest importance and respectability. Character is what has done it. Ability may have come in, but I assign it principally to character. A man in that position can ipso facto have nothing whatever to do with the wheeling of a perambulator. I was on the point of writing that I might as well be asked to clean my own boots. But, as a matter of fact, I have, since the arrival of the baby, twice been asked to clean my own boots. At any rate, I have been told that if I did not nobody else would.

The result is that Eliza generally wheels the perambulator herself. She insists upon speaking of it as “the pram,” although I have frequently told her that, to my mind, this abbreviation is a vulgarity.

One of our great national poets — I think it was Longfellow, but will not be certain — has said that a man who has children has given hostages to fortune. I am not absolutely clear of the meaning of this, but it seems quite likely. I should prefer to put it in another way myself, and to say that a man who has a baby has practically taken a back seat.

But I will not wheel the perambulator.

THE AVERAGE ADJUSTER

The other day, while I was wheeling the perambulator with one hand and reading a copy of Home Hints with the other, I came upon what might be described as a great thought.

To prevent misunderstanding, I may say that I was wheeling the perambulator in my own garden, and was particularly careful to keep to that part of the garden which is not overlooked by next door. The great thought to which I have referred was a quotation from a gentleman whose name I am unable to recall. He was, I believe, a Jesuit father. He said that if he was allowed to have the care of a child until the age of eight — or it may have been five — anybody else was welcome to take the child on afterwards. Such is the force of early associations, and so soon may an indelible stamp be set upon the human character.

At this moment Eliza from an upper window said that if I could not keep the perambulator on the path, and wanted to upset the whole thing and murder the child, I had better bring it in at once. I have said as plainly as words can speak that I object most strongly to being addressed from an upper window while I am in the garden. However fortunate one may be in one’s neighbours, there is no necessity to tell them everything. But apparently what I want or do not want goes for very little nowadays. The observation also was quite beside the mark, because the perambulator-wheel had only just touched the box edging, and I should have been certain to have noticed it myself in another moment without any outside interference.

I do not permit myself to be spoken to twice in that manner, and so I took the perambulator back to the house immediately. I left that copy of Home Hints in the perambulator, for which I am now sorry.

After dinner that night (I think I have mentioned in a previous work that we always dine in the evening now), the baby being asleep and Eliza occupied with my socks, there seemed to me to be an opportunity for rational conversation based upon the statement which I had read that afternoon with reference to the opinion of the Jesuit father.

“Eliza,” I said, “in the course of my reading today I have come upon an observation which to you may at first sight seem extraordinary.”

“Well?”

“A Jesuit father or priest — an extremely well-known man, whose name I do not remember to have heard before — has given it as his opinion that if he can have the care of a child until the age of five, or it may be eight, anybody may have that child afterwards.”

“Brute!” said Eliza. “But that’s just like so many men — get sick of a job before it’s half done.”

“You totally misunderstand,” I said. “What the Jesuit father wished to imply was that it was during these early years that the character is what might be called moulded.”

“Don’t go on,” said Eliza. “I’ve had Miss Sakers in here this afternoon talking about bismuth and dill-water as if she were my grandmother. That’s about as much advice as I can stand for one day. And the funny thing is that the advice always comes from people who can’t know anything about it. Miss Sakers has never had a baby of her own.”

“Careful, Eliza, careful!” I said, holding up a warning finger.

“What have I got to be careful about? Then look at your Jesuit priest, the man with the mouldy character that you were making so much fuss about. What can he know? I’ve always been told that these Jesuit priests aren’t allowed to marry. People who want to try silly games with bismuth can try them on their own babies, and not interfere with mine.”

“Your temper, Eliza, leads you into a confusion of ideas. All I wish to point out is that, as the Jesuit father very justly observed, these early years are most important from the point of view of education. We do not know what our boy may become. The future of the Empire might quite conceivably turn on the way we handle that boy now.”

“Then don’t go wheeling his pram into a brick wall while you’re mooning over your rotten paper.”

“If you refer to what happened this afternoon, I was not within yards of a brick wall and the paper was not rotten. But I have no wish to indulge in recriminations. All I want to do is to point out that now, if ever, you must begin to train that child towards the profession which he will ultimately adopt.”

“Ah!” said Eliza. “And what is it you want him to be?”

“| have thought that question out very carefully. It must be something a little out of the way, because otherwise you’ll get over-competition.”

“I’ll bet he keeps his end up, anyway,” said Eliza.

“The profession must also be reasonably lucrative. I have not the least doubt that early financial anxieties have taken years off my life. Two professions struck me particularly — that of the Average Adjuster, and that of the Tea Taster.”

“If I catch you giving that child tea you’ll hear from me, and that’s all about it.”

“It was not my intention to give the child tea. I must say that on the whole I prefer the career of the Average Adjuster.”

“What’s that?” asked Eliza.

“An Average Adjuster is, as the name implies, a man who adjusts averages. It has to do with insurances and shipping and that kind of thing. You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Do you understand it yourself?”

“As far as is necessary.”

“Well, what is it you want me to do about it? Do you expect me to run up and wake that baby out of a nice sleep and tell him to adjust averages? It seems to me you get more unreasonable every day you live.”

“All I meant, as you perfectly well know, was that habits of accuracy and punctuality—”

“That’s the first word you’ve said about them. You were talking about tea-adjusting, or some such nonsense.”

“Very well, Eliza. I have done my best to get you to take an intelligent view of this, and I have failed. I cannot find what is not there. Personally, I shall continue on the lines I have indicated. I intend to cut out that great thought of the Jesuit father from Home Hints, and to preserve it as my guiding principle. Kindly ring the bell.”

“Hands full,” said Eliza. “Ring it yourself.”

I did so. Parker answered it, and she was wiping her hands on her apron as she came in. She is always doing this, and I have spoken about it until I am sick and tired of it.

“Parker,” I said, “kindly bring me the copy of Home Hints which you will find in the perambulator.”

In about five minutes Parker returned to say that the paper in question had been used to re-light the nursery fire.

“That’s it,” I said bitterly. “Pray go on. Burn everything. Don’t trouble to ask me first.”

Eliza said that if I talked like that she didn’t see how I could expect servants to stop.

“I think,” I said, “that I can show you that I did no more than—”

“Well,” said Eliza, as she put the last sock back into the basket, “I can’t wait to hear about it. I’ve got to go and see to that Average Adjuster.”

I think I understand why some men take to drink.

SAMPSON

On Sunday morning I had gone out as usual to consult the thermometer (which I found to be in agreement with me as to the warmth of the day), when I saw on my lawn two things which annoyed me extremely. One was an empty mustard-tin, and the other was the cat from “Burnside,” next door. To pick up the mustard-tin and throw it at the cat was with me the work of a moment. Eliza then put her head out of the nursery window and said loudly, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Refrain from screaming,” I replied, and went indoors to have it out with her. She kept me waiting ten minutes on account of the baby, who, of course, has to be made an excuse for everything.

When I did at last succeed in asking her kindly to explain what she meant by such conduct, she produced a letter from Mrs. Epstein, who lived at “Burnside.” The letter said that she and her husband had been called away into the country owing to the serious illness of Mr. Epstein’s mother, and asked if Eliza would kindly look after the cat and see that it was fed while she was away.

“And can you inform me why the Epsteins’ servants cannot look after the cat, and why this burden is to be laid on us?”

“They haven’t got any servants. They never had but the girl, and she bolted on Friday morning, leaving the breakfast things not washed up. And Mrs. Epstein has always been obliging enough to me. She gave baby a wool ball, and she is making him another, and when the milkman disappointed us she—”

“Then I understand the Epsteins’ cat is to live here indefinitely?”

“Not indefinitely. Until they come back. Why not? I can tell you baby is a lot fonder of Sampson than he is of his wool rabbit.”

“Sampson?”

“Yes; that’s the cat’s name.”

“Well, if he is to remain here there must be certain rules and regulations which—”

“Oh, it’s not he — it’s she. It was meant to be a tomcat, and that’s why they called it Sampson, and then it turned out differently, as cats so often will.”

“And,” I asked sarcastically, “did Mrs. Epstein ask you to take charge of the empty mustard-tin and feed that as well? Because, if not, it must have been thrown over the wall by the people at ‘The Nest.’ It is not the first time I’ve had to complain about that kind of thing from them, and I shall just write a pretty sharp letter—”

“Oh, you needn’t trouble. It’s our own mustard-tin. Baby had it there. He likes it. I don’t know where you threw it, but you had better go out and see if you can find it again. He won’t like it if that mustard-tin’s gone.”

I should have imagined that a live cat and a sharp-edged mustard-tin were both of them extremely improper playthings for a baby of thirteen months, and I said as much.

“Oh, I’m always there,” said Eliza. “Don’t you worry. It’s no good laying down the laws to babies. You give them things you think they ought to like, and they scream themselves to death. And then they take up with something you think they ought to hate and regularly enjoy it. Gladys says that her youngest sister at baby’s age would not play with anything except a large lump of coal she had found and used to kiss it every night before she went to sleep.”

Gladys is the name of our second servant. She is really a nursemaid, but does other things. She is the girl who deliberately told me to hush in my own house. The morbid eccentricities of the younger members of her family did not interest me in the least, and I told Eliza so. I disapprove in toto, for that matter, of the name Gladys for a girl in that position. Eliza says that if I didn’t like it I ought to have forbidden the banns when she was baptised (a confusion of thought, of course), and that it’s too late to interfere now. This is untrue. Other people would have taken and called the girl Emily, which is what I wished.

On the following morning I had a serious complaint to make to Eliza with reference to Sampson. A cat has no business to go to sleep on a staircase, especially when the staircase is not properly lit. A very serious accident might have happened. I might have broken my neck.

“Well, you haven’t, anyhow,” said Eliza. “I hope you didn’t tread on the poor cat. She’s so nervous just now. If you’ll go out into the garden and bring her in we might give her her breakfast.”

I refused absolutely. I am not a self-assertive man but I am not going to play second fiddle to a next-door neighbour’s cat, at any rate.

The cat continued to give trouble. It was always where it was not wanted. Having discovered that I positively disliked it, its favourite pastime was to rub its head against my legs.

“It will do that once too often,” I said to Eliza, who replied that she did not see how I could be so unkind to dumb animals

On Tuesday morning Eliza said she had a postcard to say that Mr. Epstein’s mother was much better.

“Mr. Epstein’s mother is nothing to me nor I to her, but if this means that the Epsteins are about to return and to take charge of their cat instead of saddling us with it, I am most happy to hear it.”

On Wednesday morning Eliza said to me that she was perfectly sure it was going to rain, and that I had better take my bowler hat.

“On the contrary,” I said. “The barometer is rising and has been rising for the last two days. There it is in the hall, and if you would sometimes consult it you would not make these mistakes. Even if it were going to rain, I should not care to appear at the office except in a silk hat. Mr. Bagshawe always wears one.”

“Seems a pity to spoil a good hat,” said Eliza.

“As a matter of fact, it is not a good hat. It is over a year old, and I was intending to procure a new one today.”

“Ah!” said Eliza. “Then it doesn’t matter so much. Of course, it’s mostly your own fault. You left the hat on the chair in the hall instead of hanging it up, as usual, and you know what cats are. However, the Epsteins are coming back today, and I shouldn’t wonder if they let baby have one of the kittens.”

No comment was possible. Not that any man could possibly say could have expressed my feelings. I maintained absolute silence, finished my breakfast hastily, and left for the City. I have definitely forbidden Eliza to accept that kitten, even if offered.

I am heartily sorry now I ever told Eliza that it was an old hat.

THREE STAMPS

Strictly speaking, the bureau in the dining-room belongs to Eliza. It was part of the furniture bequeathed to her by her mother. In practice it has, as a matter of fact, become mine. I am the only person who uses it. It contains my papers. Even Eliza generally speaks of it as “your bureau.” It is perfectly equipped with everything which I may require in the way of stationery. Eliza said that she thought I might have worried through life without buying sealing-wax of three different colours. The comment, of course, was absurd. It costs no more to buy three sticks of three colours than to buy three sticks of one colour. Nor is it true, as she alleged, that nobody uses sealing-wax except the chemist. I use it myself on suitable occasions.

I was going over my bureau one evening to see that everything was in order, and I was much annoyed by what I found — or, rather, did not find — in the stamp drawer.

“As usual,” I said to Eliza. “This is the kind of thing I am subject to. A month ago precisely I bought and placed in this drawer twelve stamps. Today there are only three. I have, perhaps, used one of them myself. I am utterly at my wits’ end to know what to do to keep stamps.”

“Stick ’em on your face,” said Eliza. “You don’t buy stamps to keep. You buy them to use.”

“Don’t argue,” I said. “I have not used them — that is my point. Those stamps have been taken. What I want to know is, who has taken them?”

“I have,” said Eliza. “I always do and always shall. I didn’t take them to decorate the walls with. I took them to stick on letters. You can’t send letters without a stamp. See? That reminds me. If you’ve got three of them you can hand one over to me now. I’ve got to send a recipe to Miss Sakers.”

I gave her a stamp. I said that I should imagine it was humanly possible for her to remember to buy stamps for herself in the future, and requested her to do so.

Just at this moment Mrs. Epstein’s little boy called to say that his mother would be obliged by the loan of a stamp. She may have sent a penny by the boy. If she did, the boy sneaked it. In any case, at she moment of writing the loan still remains a loan. As I said to Eliza, if there is anything the Epsteins do not get it will not be for the want of asking for it. However, there is a way of dealing with these things. One of these nights I propose to see if Mrs. Epstein cannot oblige me with the loan of a stamp.

But to continue. Later that evening the message was brought in that Mr. Bunn had called, and wished very particularly to see me. I did not in the least wish to see Mr. Bunn, knowing what it was about, but felt it to be more politic to have him shown into the dining-room. It was Mr. Bunn who moved us when we came to this house, and his account has never been absolutely settled since. He does paper-hanging and decorating as well as removing, and is always full of suggestions. Eliza says that he twists me round his finger. The real truth is that where he has made suggestions which I believed to be useful I have occasionally adopted them, without, perhaps, taking sufficiently into consideration the question of expense. I was not at this moment quite prepared to settle Mr. Bunn’s account in full, and told him so fairly and frankly.

“That’s all right, sir,” said Mr. Bunn cheerfully. “All I want is something to be going on with. I have my men to pay every week, and my credit with the wholesale has its limits. What do you say now to a cheque for a fiver on account?”

After some further conversation I wrote and gave him a cheque for three pounds ten and asked for a receipt.

“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Bunn. “I’ll make it out now. I’m afraid I shall have to trouble you for a stamp. But, after all, where it’s two receipts instead of one it’s only fair you should pay one of them.”

That was the last straw. A man might as well call at your house in order to cut your throat and steal a knife first to do it with. He told me he had got a new wallpaper just in which would make my hall look a very different thing. But I declined even to enter into the question.

And, of course, by the last post I had a letter requiring an immediate answer, and had no stamp for the answer. I was free to act as a free gratis post office to everybody except myself.

Eliza, who has rather queer notions of what constitutes a joke, seemed to be amused. I said very little myself, but I quite made up my mind as to the line which I would take. On my way to the City in the morning I looked in at Mr. Bunn’s. He employs a clever carpenter who can be trusted to handle a fine old piece of furniture. The bureau originally had a lock, but some time or other it had been removed, and I was now determined to replace it. It might be, of course, that Eliza had all the stamps, or it might not. To leave stamps about is equivalent to leaving money about. It puts temptation in the way of the servants, and is not right.

The man came next afternoon when Eliza was out, and did the job very neatly. It was a spring lock. The mere action of shutting the lid of the desk locked it. When Eliza returned I showed her what I had done.

“Paid Bunn’s bill yet?” she asked.

“That is not what we are discussing. In future you must remember to buy stamps for yourself. You will be unable to get them from the bureau. I do not wish to encourage acts of thoughtlessness in you, or habits of dishonesty in the servants. You will observe, I place twelve stamps in At stamp drawer and I shut down the flap.”

“Don’t shut it!” said Eliza quickly.

I do not take orders given in that way, and I did shut it. I then asked her what she meant.

“Oh, nothing much,” said Eliza. “I happened to see that your keys were inside — that’s all. Bad thing to get habits of thoughtlessness, isn’t it?”

“If,” I said coldly, “that girl Gladys is doing nothing, as usual, she can run round to Mr. Bunn’s and ask if he can send his man again.”

BRIDGE ABANDONED

It is my opinion that there is not very much in this game of bridge about which we hear so much talk. It is not an intellectual game, and for that reason alone, quite apart from what took place at the Epstein’s, I shall not go on with it. In two evenings I practically made myself master of the whole thing. I do not mean that I can always say offhand what I should score at the end of a game, or what the precise value of a trick in any suit is. But as that information is given in a very clear and concise form on the back of every bridge marker, it is hardly worth the while of a busy man to burden his mind with it.

I was introduced to the game by a Mr. Spratt, who was staying with Mr. Timson, the curate at St. Augustine’s. Though intended for the Church, Mr. Spratt seemed rather bent on seeing life. He was always getting up tea-parties, going to bazaars, singing at concerts, and so on.

We did not, on the two occasions to which I have referred, play for points. Mr. Timson only consented to learn on this condition, which I think is to his credit. I may add that I am myself opposed to gambling, and consider that any game which is not worth playing for its own sake is not worth playing at all.

One evening, on my return from the City, Eliza said to me that she would not mind betting that the Epsteins had got somebody coming to dinner that night.

“What makes you think so?” I asked.

“Mrs. Epstein was buying tinned mulligatawny at the grocer’s yesterday afternoon, and I saw the asparagus going in myself this morning. That speaks for itself.”

Eliza was perfectly correct. A little later, happening to be at one of our upstairs windows, I cast an eye into the Epsteins’ garden. Mr. Epstein had two strangers with him — both elderly men — and he was pointing out to them the place where the sweet-peas would be when they came up. I dismissed the subject from my mind. It was nothing to do with me, and I took no interest in it. All I said to Eliza was that if the Epsteins were going to give a dinner-party they might have remembered us, considering all the trouble we had had with their cat.

About nine o’clock that night Mrs. Epstein’s little boy brought a verbal message that Mr. Epstein would be very glad if I would come in to make a four at bridge. My first impulse was to refuse. As I said to Eliza, if I am not good enough to be asked to dinner I am not good enough to be asked to anything. Eliza said that if she were me she would not be so silly.

The remark was as absurd as it was ungrammatical.

“If you were I,” I said to Eliza, “you would be I. That is to say, you would be neither more silly nor less silly than I am. If you would only train yourself to look at things in a logical way, you would—”

“Are you going to keep that boy of the Epsteins’ waiting all night while you make up your mind?”

If I must err, I would sooner err on the side of good nature. I sent word by the boy that I should be happy to oblige.

My observations from the window had shows me it would not be necessary to assume evening dress. I changed my coat for something rather more recent, and went round.

Mr. Epstein introduced me to Mr. Horrocks and Mr. Bird. We four were to play bridge while Mrs. Epstein read the evening paper. Mr. and Mrs. Epstein, Mr. Horrocks, and Mr. Bird were all of them slightly flushed in the face, and there was more laughter than I could find any sufficient reason for.

We cut for partners, and I found I had to play with Mr. Epstein. He asked me what kind of a game I played. I said that my game was average.

I then understood him to say, “I am hearty and strong. What are you?” I replied politely that I was well myself. This perfectly inoffensive remark was the signal for a burst of laughter. Mr. Horrocks said it was capital. Mr. Bird said it was very good

Then Mr. Horrocks said “Weak-and-weak” to Mr. Bird, and Mr. Bird nodded. I looked at the back of my marker, but I could find no reference to weak-and-weak. This evidently was not the game as I understood it.

Mr. Epstein left the declaration to me, and although I had a very curious hand I was not in the least doubtful as to what I should do. I held ten clubs headed by the ace, king, queen, and my other three cards were the aces of the other suits. The preponderance of clubs was beyond any possibility of a mistake, and I declared clubs accordingly.

When I put down my hand Mr. Horrocks and Mr. Bird were once more convulsed with laughter, but Mr. Epstein seemed far from pleased. He said he could appreciate a joke as much as any man, but that he thought I was really going too far.

“I do not see what you have to grumble at,” I said. “It looks to me perfectly sound. Unless the other side have some remarkably good cards we must make nearly every trick.”

“We must make absolutely every trick. It scores twenty-eight. We should also have made every trick at no trumps, which would have scored eighty-four below the line and a hundred and forty above it.”

This particular hand was never played. They simply wrote down a score and the cards were dealt again. That is not bridge as I understand it. Even if you think that you can win, you should play the thing out. You never know what the other side may have.

Mr. Bird then went hearts and made game. I followed with a no-trump declaration, and only succeeded in getting two tricks. I had imagined from the weakness of my own hand that my partner must be strong, but with the exception of two aces and two kings he had no cards of any value.

We lost the rubber, and Mr. Epstein produced his purse. Five-pence a hundred had been suggested, and I had consented to this. But both Mr. Horrocks and Mr. Bird positively refused to receive money. They said that if they did they would be unable to sleep that night. It appeared that they both had trains to catch, and that they could not play another rubber. Both of them told me that it had been a most interesting and amusing game, and that they were delighted to have met me.

As we were leaving I overheard Mr. Horrocks saying in a low voice to Mr. Epstein, “This will be a lesson to you, Epstein.” So quite evidently Epstein was not justified in trying to teach me how the game of bridge should be played. However, he received the reproof quite meekly, and merely said, “You bet!”

At the moment of writing the Epsteins have not sent round again to ask me to make a four at bridge. But when they do I have made up my mind to refuse. I shall say that I am very sorry to seem disobliging, but that I have abandoned bridge. I prefer a game which gives a little more exercise to my mental faculties.

AN EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE

Some days ago, as I was walking down Chancery Lane on my way back from seeing our firm’s solicitors, I was the actual eyewitness of a most extraordinary occurrence. The road was very slip at the time, and a taxicab skidded, and ran with its front wheels right up on the kerb. I need hardly point out that this might have resulted in the loss of one or more human lives. As a matter of fact, no one was even hurt, and the cab itself was not damaged. The man inside the cab did not get out; the driver simply backed it away from the kerb and went straight on. This sensational incident made a great impression upon me.

On returning to the office I went into Mr, Bagshawe’s room to tell him what our solicitors had said. As a rule, I confine my conversation with him to business subjects. He prefers it and has said so. But I could not but suppose that he would be interested in the narrow escape which I had just witnessed. I described it to him in detail. When I had finished he asked me my age. The question surprised me, but I was able to answer it with complete accuracy, giving not only the year but the odd number of days. When I had finished, he said:

“Then don’t talk like an infant of six. It wastes time and I don’t like it.”

Mr. Bagshawe rather prides himself on taking everything very calmly and quietly, and I always make an allowance for his manner. I dare say dyspepsia has something to do with it. As I was going out to lunch I remarked to young Gillivant:

“I witnessed this morning a most extraordinary occurrence.”

Gillivant looked at me rather suspiciously.

“Well?” he said.

I told him what I had seen in Chancery Lane. I pointed out that the front wheels of the cab were right upon the kerb, and that if a child had been standing there it would probably have been knocked down and killed. I also observed what a remarkable thing it was that the cab itself did not overturn. When I had finished he winked his eye and said: “No good, old man.”

I inquired what he meant.

“I mean you can’t catch me with that silly old sell. You want me to ask what there was wonderful in it. Try it on the office-boy, I’m too old for it.”

I assured him that nothing was further from my mind than any attempt to deceive or to play a joke upon him. What I had narrated was a simple fact. He again told me that it was no good, and quite evidently did not believe me.

Later in the day I said to old Pridgeon: “I saw something today which seems almost incredible. In fact I told it to young Gillivant and he flatly refused to believe it. It happened in Chancery Lane. I was walking down the Lane when a taxicab passed me. I noticed that the surface of the road was greasy, but did not give it a second thought. No idea of an accident was in my mind. Suddenly the cab swerved round — skidded, I supposed.”

I continued the story to the end. Old Pridgeon then said rather gruffly that I ought to be ashamed of myself and walked away. It was a perfectly senseless comment. I had no reason whatever to be ashamed of myself. In telling him of the occurrence I had made use of no blasphemous or improper expression.

It is not every day that I have an item of exceptional interest to take home from the city, but this was an occasion, and I took advantage of it at dinner-time.

“Strange things happen in London,” I said to Eliza.

She said, “Well?”

“I was walking down Chancery Lane this morning when I witnessed what might have been a most terrible disaster. One of those red taxicabs happened to pass me. The surface of the road at the time was extremely slippery, and I have no doubt that the man had to apply his brakes suddenly owing to some exigency of the traffic. Be that as it may, I can assure you—”

And I continued the story as before. “I venture to say,” I added, “that that is a most extraordinary occurrence.”

“I saw another extraordinary occurrence this morning,” said Eliza, “when I was out with baby.”

“Ah,” I said, “what was that?”

“I saw a man and he’d got two legs.”

“There’s nothing extraordinary in that.”

“Oh, don’t you see what a marvellous escape it was. If he’d had a hundred he’d have been a centipede.”

It was evidently of no use to discuss the matter with Eliza while she was in this frame of mind. I have, however, narrated the scene that I witnessed in Chancery Lane at length here, because I feel sure that it must interest my readers. I may add that the front wheels of that taxicab were at the very least half a foot upon the kerb.

THE GARDEN FÊTE

Eliza, who is far too much inclined to do things on her own responsibility, told me she had taken two tickets for a garden féte at Mr. Buddilow’s (“The Chestnuts”) in aid of the new mission-room in Buxton Street. The tickets were a shilling each, but I am always willing to put my hand in my pocket for a good cause. I thought I should have been consulted — that was all — and said so.

“Besides,” I added, “I am not personally acquainted with Mr. Buddilow, and the whole thing is not in our parish.”

“No,” said Eliza. “And I thought we might take baby. There is no charge for babies in arms. I could carry him some of the time, and you could—”

“If you knew anything whatever about garden fétes, Eliza, you would know that they constitute a class of entertainment which is utterly and completely over the baby’s head.”

As Eliza gave way on this point I raised no further objections. I understood from Eliza that there would be a band provided, and a café chantant in the Parisian manner, and various other attractions.

As it happened the weather was fine. I was a little in doubt as to the correct costume for the occasion. Eliza said I could go in anything and everybody else would. This was no help. Having regard to the fact that this was an entertainment tor a religious object, I went in a silk hat and frock-coat. Almost every man there was in a straw hat and flannels. If I had gone in a straw hat and flannels nobody else would have worn them. It seems to me sometimes as if everything I do is fated to be wrong.

Mr. Buddilow is a Justice of the Peace, and a man of very considerable wealth. His garden is beautiful and extends, | should say, to upwards of three acres. Some of the paths were marked “Private,” with a rope stretched across them. It was a small matter, but it annoyed me, I had paid my money on the understanding that the grounds were thrown open to the public. Only part of them was thrown open Several entertainments were provided, but one had to pay extra for all of them, with the exception of the band. In that case, I asked myself, what was the admission money paid for in the original instance? It looked to me like sharp practice, and I do not like sharp practice, even for a religious object. There was a coconut-shy, with which I definitely refused to have anything to do. It is not an amusement for a man of my age, intelligence, and position. Eliza, I am sorry to say, so far forgot herself as to have a shy, and I regret to add that she got a coconut. I had to carry it all the rest of the afternoon, and most inconvenient it was. The band on the lawn wanted a man over them who knew what work was. Their intervals were from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour by my watch between the pieces. And even so, before I left they had begun to play some of the old selections again. Tea was provided in a refreshment tent, and we were told we could pay ninepence each and have anything we liked. We paid ninepence each, and I hope Eliza had anything she liked. Personally, I did not. If there is one thing I dislike more than stewed tea it is a cake which has been made with bad eggs. If I had not constantly reminded myself of the real necessity for a mission-room in Buxton Street, a very low neighbourhood, I might have got rather irritable about it.

The café chantant (pronounced “caffy shongtong”) was also on the fraudulent side. Admission was threepence and the entertainment only lasted a quarter of an hour. After that you were turned out and a fresh batch came in. It was far less gay than I had expected. Somebody sang “The Holy City,” there was a performance on the pianola, and the choir boys sang “Oh! who will o’er the downs so free?” It was the tenth time they had sung it that afternoon, and they appeared to be justifiably sick of it. It is almost impossible for me to avoid taking a businesslike view of a business transaction. The entertainment was not worth threepence. Eliza had refused to enter, on the ground that by standing outside the tent she could hear it all just as well as if she was inside. As I told her, that was a matter entirely for her own conscience, and I did not wish to dictate. Soon afterwards Eliza said she had got tired of it and she should go home. I am glad to say that she took the coconut with her. I remained to see if there was any chance of my getting something approximating to my money’s worth.

I was tired of walking about, and patent leather, though it gives a dressy appearance, has a tendency to draw the feet. Finding an unoccupied chair, I sat down. Almost immediately a cheerful old gentleman with a brown leather satchel stepped up to me and said: “Twopence for the chair, please.” It was just a little beyond the limit. I asked bitterly how much I had to pay to be allowed to breathe. The satire was lost on him. He only laughed and said it was a jolly good idea; he would think about it.

I now come to the one thing in the afternoon that gave me any real satisfaction. I was passing a very small tent on which was a notice:

PROFESSOR RIENZI

Phrenologist

LEARN YOUR TRUE CHARACTER BY HIS INFALLIBLE METHOD

As nothing was said about the price I should not have dreamed of entering. I had been caught out often enough and did not propose to be caught again that afternoon. But at the door of the tent a remarkably pretty girl, fashionably dressed, was standing, and she ran up to me in the friendliest way and caught me by the arm.

“Do come and see the phrenologist, sir,” she said. “Most interesting. He tells you all about your gifts and abilities by the bumps on your head, and the charge is only a shilling.”

I have often wished to have an independent and impartial view of my character, and it was for that reason — and not in the least because the girl was pretty — that I parted with my shilling. Inside the tent was a man in a dressing-gown with a very long white beard and thick white hair. He made me sit down and passed his hand over my head. His description of my character, to my mind, showed extraordinary insight. He told me many things about myself which, so far as I know, are not generally suspected.

As I left I thanked him, and I said to the girl that it was a wonderful performance and well worth the money. She said: “Then you might run about and get some more to come. We did awfully well the first part of the afternoon, but now things are getting slack again.”

I did not run about. I left at once because I did not wish to be involved in any further expenditure. I also wished on my return to “Meadowsweet” to make a note of all the phrenologist had said about me. He had said nothing which was not in the highest degree gratifying.

After dinner, while Eliza was knitting wool socks for the baby, I said: “I want a serious answer to a serious question, Eliza.”

“A funny thing you always want that when I’m counting stitches. What is it?”

“Would you say, Eliza, that I was a man of an iron will?”

“No,” said Eliza.

“Yet I have been assured today by an absolute stranger that such is the case.”

“Of course, if he did not know you, he might make the mistake.”

“I do not know that it was a mistake. The man was a professor of phrenology, which is a wonderful science. He fad his own special means of finding out what my gifts and abilities might be.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said that I had the artistic temperament but kept within proper bounds. Many years ago I was told by a man who had no interest in making the remark that I ought to have gone on the stage. The phrenologist practically repeated that. He said I had the dramatic instinct.”

“What did you pay him?” asked Eliza.

“One shilling.”

“He earned his money,” said Eliza thoughtfully. “That was at the féte this afternoon, wasn’t it?”

“It was; after you had left. It is in my nature to tire quickly of gaiety and excitement. I was pleased to find one small tent devoted to the serious study of one’s inner nature.”

“You knew it was all spoof, of course. Miss Sakers told me all about it. Professor Rienzi is just young Buddilow dressed up, and the girl outside the tent is the girl he is going to marry. She had a bet with another girl that they’d take two pounds before six o’clock, and I expect she’s won it. Pretty girls can always do what they like, can’t they?”

As I pointed out to Eliza, all her statements proved, even if they were correct, was that young Mr. Buddilow happens to be a man with a most extraordinary insight into character.

THE LETTER TO “THE TIMES”

I was talking over the subject the other day with one or two friends of mine, and we all agreed that dreams are very curious things. We cannot account for them.

My friends all had instances which happened within their own experience of dreams that had come true. These seem to be quite common, but they have never come my way.

“Why,” I said to Eliza that night, “have I never had a dream that has come true? Men whom I cannot possibly think to be my superiors or even my equals seem to have dreams of this kind, or if they don’t their wives do.”

“Don’t seem to me the kind of thing I should worry about,” said Eliza.

“Look, for instance, at the dream that I had last night or early this morning. I was adding up an immensely long column of figures. The trouble was that I myself was one of the figures, so that when I got down to the bottom of the column to add them up, that put the addition all wrong. Mr. Bagshawe came in at the moment, and I asked him what I should do about it, and he said the only thing to do was to wear larger boots in future. That is the kind of dream I get. It not only does not come true, but it cannot come true.”

“Last night,” said Eliza, “I dreamt that some money came to me.”

“Seems to be much the same sort of dream as mine.”

“I don’t know. We were sitting in this room together, and the girl knocked at the door, and brought in a letter, and the money was in the letter. That might happen!”

“I think not. Who’s going to send you any money?”

At this moment a most singular and dramatic thing happened. Parker knocked at the door and brought in a letter for Eliza.

“Open it at once,” I said.

She did so. It contained a postal order for eighteen-pence from the people at Grimsby who supply us with fish, and was accompanied by a letter apologizing for the mistake in the account which Eliza had pointed out to them.

“The first thing to do,” I said, “is to make a note of the exact time at which the letter arrived.”

“Why?” said Eliza.

On second thoughts I could not exactly say why. All I could tell her was that it was usual. Whenever a dream comes true, people always make a note of the exact time. It seems to be one of the rules.

Eliza did not seem to attach much importance to the incident. She said that after all it was only Spence and it hardly seemed worth getting a supernatural warning about. At the same time, if those people at Grimsby tried anything of the kind on with her again, she would get her fish elsewhere. She then went up to see the baby, and I sat down at my bureau to prepare a careful and temperate statement of what had occurred for publication in the form of a letter in The Times newspaper.

I began as follows:

“Dear Sir, — It has been well observed by Shakespeare that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of—”

I stopped here, because I could not for the life of me remember the rest of the quotation. The memory is a very curious thing. You cannot explain it. That quotation is rather a favourite of mine. I use it constantly. And now it was gone.

However, I began again:

“Dear Sir, — It is a question whether a supernatural premonition is required with reference to a small consideration which in this case was precisely the sum of eighteen-pence, but may be conditioned by a further question of commercial morality, or, at any rate, accuracy, on which it may be fairly said that the fortunes of this empire do under Providence to some considerable extent—”

I read this over again. It was all right, and I could see the meaning precisely. But perhaps it was better after all to shut out abstract considerations for which The Times newspaper, in the event of any unusual pressure of news, might not be able to find space. I therefore began again:

“Dear Sir, — A dream that came absolutely and literally true,” I wrote, “although it merely involved the correction of a small sum in a tradesman’s account, may perhaps be of some interest to those of your readers who are interested in such interesting subjects—”

The last phrase clearly needed to be recast. I was just going to recast it, when Eliza came in, and asked me what was doing.

“I am preparing,” I said, “a statement with reference to your dream and its fulfilment for publication in The Times. Our name of course will not be given, nor the address. It is customary to enclose these as evidence of one’s bona fides, but they form no part of the matter to be published.”

“Well,” said Eliza. “I’m blest if it doesn’t beat me altogether.”

“The problem,” I said, “is one upon which I myself would be glad to hear.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about that,” said Eliza. “You go to business in the City. You’ve got on pretty well. You’ve had your salary raised. And yet when you’re at home you act just like a child. Do you mean to say you didn’t know that I had never had any dream at all, and was just having a little game with you? I had written to complain about that account, and told them to put it right by return of post, or I should deal elsewhere. So of course I knew the money was coming.”

“In that case, Eliza, you made a statement to me which you must have known to be untrue. Conduct of that kind does not tend to increase my confidence in your character.”

“Oh, cheer up,” said Eliza. “Everything’s got to have a start. Even if the dream didn’t come true, it would have come true if it had ever been a dream.”

“I want you to see the principle involved.”

“Yes,” said Eliza. “And I want you to come and have a look at the waste pipe of the bath. I don’t know what that girl’s been doing to it, but the water won’t run off. You had Better bring a bit of cane with you or something of that kind.”

It seemed idle to pursue the subject further.

THE COCKROACH

The other day, as I was leaving the office, old Pridgeon came up to me in a very free and easy way and said, “What do you do about cockroaches?”

Now, I like Pridgeon very well, and in the matter of the greenhouse he certainly gave me some useful hints. But I should like to see him show a proper sense of the difference which has occurred in our relations. We are no longer on terms of equality. If I am not actually Pridgeon’s master, I am at any rate approximate to that. So I was rather stand-offish in my manner. I said, “What do I do about cockroaches? I simply fail to understand you, Pridgeon.”

“Why,” said Pridgeon, “what is the difficulty? What I mean is what do you do to get rid of cockroaches? It’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

“I do nothing to get rid of cockroaches, and have no need to do anything. In a house which is properly kept and looked after there are no cockroaches. We have none, and I cannot advise you.”

“Oh,” said Pridgeon, “we’ve got them, and they’re getting a bit too thick.”

I dismissed the subject from my mind at the moment, but when I got back, on my way up the High Street, I saw in an ironmonger’s window a remarkably ingenious trap for cockroaches, acting electrically. The price, ten-pence, was perhaps rather high for a thing of the kind, but scientific apparatus, as I found when I purchased a garden thermometer, nearly always runs into money. I determined that I would mention it to Pridgeon next day. The man himself is all right. It is merely that he has not the tact to adapt his manner to changed circumstances.

A few minutes later, in the course of casual conversation, Eliza said to me that Gladys rather believed that she had seen a black-beetle in the kitchen the night before. This naturally came to me as a bit of a shock.

“By black-beetle she means cockroach. They are an extremely annoying and disgusting thing to have in the house. May I inquire what she did about it?”

“Didn’t do anything about it. Said it was too quick for her.”

“Well,” I said, “after all, the very important thing is what you personally have done about it.”

“Nothing — same as Gladys. Have I got to pull my hair out every time the girl thinks she sees a black-beetle?”

“I never suggested that you should pull your hair out by the roots. I do suggest that in a house of this class, for which I pay forty sovereigns in rent every year, cockroaches should not be allowed to exist. However, it is the same old story. If anything has to be done, I must do it myself. Kindly give me my hat, please.”

I went out and purchased the cockroach trap which I had seen in the ironmonger’s shop. Mr. Pawling himself served me, and said that it was quite a new thing, for which he anticipated a great sale. I went over the directions with him and found the trap simple in construction and yet remarkably ingenious. The fact that the cockroach infallibly perished before it had ever reached the bait made it singularly economical in working. Also, as the trap reset itself automatically, it would destroy a million cockroaches with the same ease that it would destroy one. Science has always had a fascination for me, and I was really almost glad that we had a cockroach on which to experiment.

I showed Eliza the paper of directions and then explained the trap to her. As I had expected, she quite failed to appreciate the ingenuity of the mechanism.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I can only give you an explanation. I cannot provide you with the intelligence to understand it. I shall now take the trap into the kitchen and set it myself, placing it, as directed, near the range.”

“While you are there,” said Eliza, “you had better catch that cockroach and read the paper of directions to it. Otherwise it won’t know which way it has got to go into the trap, — it may miss the second turning on the right, and nothing happen at all.”

I told her that intentional silliness did not appeal to me, and went into the kitchen. I examined the trap at 9.30, at 10, at 10.30 and at 10.45. The cockroach was not yet caught, but I believe it is a well-known fact in natural history that these insects are nocturnal in their habits. I examined the trap again at eight o’clock next morning, and the cockroach was still not to be found. As I said to Eliza, in things of this kind all that one wants is a little patience.

On the following morning and the day after, the cockroach remained at large. I tried changing the position of the trap, I also altered the character of the bait provided. But I did not get the result I anticipated. Eliza, of course, had to regard it as rather a joke.

“On the contrary,” I said, “it is a very serious matter. The cockroach lays a great number of eggs, and lays them continuously.”

“Pity it isn’t a hen,” said Eliza.

“You will adopt a different tone,” I said, “when you find the house swarming with cockroaches from cellar to roof.”

“Well,” she said, “what did you want to buy that rotten old trap for? That will never catch anything except the mug who bought it. Ten-pence for a thing like that! A pennyworth of beetle poison from the chemist was what you wanted.”

“I think not. We have a child in this house. It would be highly dangerous.”

“So it would, if I kept the child in the kitchen all night. But then I don’t.”

“The poison might contaminate the milk.”

“So it would, if I put it in it. But I shouldn’t.”

It was useless to continue the subject with her. Rather reluctantly I had recourse to Pridgeon. Unfortunately he was in a rather bad temper with me.

“Did you get rid of those cockroaches, Pridgeon?” I said, quite pleasantly.

“I thought we were not interested in cockroaches, not since we got our rise and took a larger size in hats.”

I passed this over. “On the contrary,” I said, “I should be interested to know how you got rid of them. I might find occasion to use the same method one day. We are only human, even the best of us.”

“Well,” said Pridgeon, “I will tell you what I did. I got a paving-stone measuring six feet by three, and laid it down in the garden. I then placed the cockroaches on the paving-stone and passed the garden roller over it two or three times. After that they gave me no more trouble. You try it yourself.”

It ended, as it always does, in Eliza having her own way. She put down the poison and it killed nothing. Of course, however, it would be too much to expect her to confess that she was in the wrong. What she says now is that the cockroach was never seen before or since, and that it is her belief that Gladys imagined it.

If that is the case, all I have to say is that there is ten-pence thrown in the gutter because Eliza chooses to employ hysterical servants.

THE DUKE OF COVERDALE

Young Gillivant accompanied me to the station — not by my invitation, but with some idea of making himself agreeable. The reason for this subsequently transpired. I did not dream of lending him half a sovereign, and I told him so. I quoted him that excellent proverb which says that those who borrow come to sorrow. He said he was ready to take his chance. It was just then that he pointed out to me on the platform a tall gentleman of distinguished appearance with a grey beard.

“Know who that is?” said Gillivant.

I admitted that I did not.

“That’s the Duke of Coverdale. Frightfully wealthy bug.”

I think I have already mentioned that Gillivant is extremely well connected and has a wide knowledge of society. His Grace entered a first-class smoking compartment in the train which I myself was about to patronize. I got rid of Gillivant by letting him have eighteen-pence to be going on with, and I then entered the same compartment as the Duke. No man is less a snob than I am, but it struck me it would be interesting to say that night to Eliza: “Whom do you think I travelled down with this evening? No less a person than the Duke of Coverdale, one of the wealthiest of our English aristocracy.”

I had hardly entered the carriage before the Duke bent forward towards me with a delightful old-world courtesy, and asked me if I could oblige him with a light.

I said, “With pleasure, sir.” I did not say “your Grace,” because I thought it quite possible that he did not wish for public recognition. At my suggestion he was condescending enough to put a few of my matches in his waistcoat pocket for purposes of reference.

The train was just starting when a ticket inspector entered the compartment. I said “Season,” and he nodded. The Duke produced a ticket which was not of the right colour. The inspector glanced at it and said, “Ninepence excess, please.”

“The firsts on this rotten line are so like the thirds that anyone may make a mistake,” said the Duke.

“Ninepence excess, please.”

“Besides, there’s no room in the thirds. Never is at this time of day.”

“Ninepence excess, please,” said the inspector.

The Duke then handed him a threepenny piece, a stamp, and five-pence in coppers, and told him to go to the devil.

“Thank you, sir,” said the inspector and got out. I could not help smiling to myself, as I reflected how very different the manner of this underling would have been if he had had any idea of the rank of the person whom he was addressing. I was not in the least surprised that the Duke had a third-class ticket. Men of great wealth can afford to indulge in their little eccentricities.

A little later I ventured to call his Grace’s attention to the fact that the sky now presented a threatening aspect. He said he believed the country wanted rain, and as he then resumed his evening paper I did not press the matter further. However, as I got out at my station I said, “Good evening,” and he very graciously returned the salutation.

When I reached home I called Eliza’s attention to my matchbox.

“That’s the ordinary twopence-a-dozen sort you always have, isn’t it?”

“It is. What is rather interesting is that at this present moment some of the matches which were originally in that box are in the waistcoat pocket of one of our greatest landowners, the Duke of Coverdale.”

“I wouldn’t have stuck it, if I’d been you,” said Eliza. “A man may borrow a match from you, but he has no business to pocket any.”

“He pocketed them by my express invitation. An extremely pleasant fellow. I had rather an interesting chat with him in the train coming down.”

“Duke of Coverdale,” said Eliza thoughtfully. “I’ve come upon that name somewhere recently.”

“Nothing is more probable. His Grace is very much in the public eye. You have probably seen some reference to him in the newspaper.”

“May have done,” said Eliza. “How do you know it was the Duke?”

“Gillivant pointed him out. He knows all those people.”

At dinner that night Eliza suddenly exclaimed, “I’ve got it!”

“Got what?”

“I know where I came across the name of the Duke of Coverdale. His picture is in the fashionable weddings in this week’s Home Happiness.”

“I’ll trouble you for it.”

The picture was of a quite young man with an appearance of pimples on the face. The accompanying letterpress told me that he had been married a week previously, and was spending the honeymoon in the South of France.

“Is the picture like him?” asked Eliza.

“Not very,” I said. “Photographs are so seldom satisfactory.”

I took that page of Home Happiness up to the office next morning, and confronted Gillivant with it.

“Ah,” he said. “Somebody will get the sack over that. That’s a bad blunder.”

I felt, and still feel, more inclined to believe the statements of Home Happiness than those of young Gillivant. However, I did not pursue the subject. I merely asked him if he had received the remittance that he expected, and if in that case he would kindly return me the small advance which I had made him.

It would certainly be a curious coincidence — and also highly unsatisfactory — if it turned out that the only time I ever had any conversation with a Duke, it was not a Duke at all.

A FAILURE IN ECONOMY

I had been struck — as I suppose almost every thinking man must at some time have been struck — by the vast amount of rhubarb which is every year allowed to go to waste. Many of us grow far more than we can use, and only a greengrocer can ever hope to sell it.

It is not even easy to give it away. I remember that once, when Eliza’s mother had obliged with the water rate and last quarter’s rent until better times, I twice sent her a bundle of our own home-grown rhubarb as a token of gratitude. The poor old lady asked me as tactfully as possible through Eliza to send no more, as she found it produced acidity, and her servant had now turned against it. Some men would dismiss such a subject from their minds at once as a mere trifle, but I am not of that type. It is not to me a trifle that the bountiful gifts of Nature should be squandered. It was, moreover, a question which was being peculiarly brought home to me. At my new house, “Meadowsweet,” the rhubarb bed is simply out of all proportion. It occupies space of which I could make better use, if the landlord were less difficult about it. He is one of those men who have to be humoured. Rhubarb jam was attempted on a small scale, but as Eliza dislikes it, and I cannot say that I am fond of it myself, and they refuse to touch it in the kitchen, it hardly seemed worth the trouble and expense. Consequently I was rather impressed when old Pridgeon — a practical man in his way, though he could never rise to my position in the office — happened to say that rhubarb wine, after two or three years in bottle, was indistinguishable even by experts from the finest Chablis.

Here I seemed to see a way out of my difficulty. It would be a pleasure to me naturally to place a bottle of good wine on my table which was of my own growing and manufacture. It was a still greater pleasure to feel that my rhubarb would not be wasted. The only trouble was that I was not acquainted with the standard process of the manufacture of rhubarb wine.

I first consulted the encyclopedia. Under the word “rhubarb” I found that wine was one of the uses to which it might be put. I then turned up “wine” and found that rhubarb was one of the substances from which wine might be made. Other information, of course, was given. I learned, for instance, that medicinal rhubarb is grown principally in Mongolia, and I picked up a thing or two about carbon dioxide. But not one word was said as to the process of manufacturing rhubarb wine. These encyclopedias need a deal of revision. I then wrote to the editor of Home Happiness, which we have every week, and asked him if he would kindly oblige me with a recipe for rhubarb wine in his “Answers to Correspondents.” He kept me waiting for six weeks, and I then received this reply: “The recipe for which ‘Constant Reader’ asks is so well known that we do not think space could advantageously be given to it here.”

And then, as so often happens, a mere chance came to my assistance. It turned out that Parker’s mother had made rhubarb wine, and that Parker thought she could remember how it was done. We got on to it at once. The process was much longer than I had expected, and Parker was far less certain about it than I could have wished. She was, for instance, not quite sure whether the bung should be put in the barrel or not.

However, one night the work was completed, and we went to bed at our usual hour, At about two in the morning we were awakened by a loud crash of glass. Eliza said there were burglars in the house. I was by no means sure of this myself, or I should probably have gone down, but I thought it best to take precautions. I keep a police whistle in our bedroom at night — a practice which I should recommend to every householder. I leaned out of the window and blew it sharply. Presently a policeman came along at a walking pace. A lied more hurry would have shown a keener sense of duty.

“What’s up?” he said.

“I have some reason to believe that this house has been broken into. We have just heard a crash of glass. It sounded as if it might be the scullery window.”

“I’ll go round and have a look,” said the policeman.

He was back in a minute and said it was the window of the scullery, and that I had better come down and let him in. There was no necessity for that at the moment, as he could easily put his arm through the broken pane and push the fastening back, and then get in at the scullery window.

This was what he did at my suggestion. We heard him moving about heavily downstairs, and then he called up that he could find nobody. I could not be quite sure that was right, so I went down.

“No sign of any burglar,” said the policeman cheerily, “but you’ve got a rare old mess in your scullery.”

I looked in to see what had happened. It was a great pity that I ever allowed myself to be guided by Parker at all. The bung had been blown out of the cask and had broken the window, and the whole place was swimming in rhubarb wine. When I mentioned it to Pridgeon some days afterwards he said that it was secondary fermentation, and all my foolishness in trying to do a thing without learning the way first.

At this moment a second policeman appeared, and he also got in at the scullery window. They inspected the coal-cellar with great care, and still seemed to linger. They were pleasant-spoken men, and said that these accidents would happen. I suggested a glass of beer, and they fell in with it at once. They finished the last two bottles in the house, and then decided that they must be getting on.

Of course, if there was any right or justice in the world, the price of that broken window, and of the materials used for rhubarb wine, and of those two bottles of beer, would all be stopped out of Parker’s salary. But under the present conditions of domestic service such a thing is not feasible.

However, an incident of this kind often gets one’s blood up, and next morning I went round to the landlord’s agent and practically held a pistol to his head.

“Either that rhubarb goes or I go,” I said. He took a note of what I proposed to put there in its place, and said that he would communicate with the landlord. Negotiations are still pending, but my position is a strong one, last quarter’s rent having been paid down on the actual day, and I have reason to hope that my determined stand will meet with success.

In any case, there will be no more rhubarb wine in my house. Eliza is quite definite about it. I need hardly add that the noise of the explosion and the breaking glass woke everybody in the house except Parker. That is the way these things happen.

THE PHOTOGRAPH

“Eliza,” I said, “it is part of your domestic duty to purchase such things as are required for use in our home. Could you tell me in a few simple words what principle guides you in making such purchases?”

“Principle? There’s no principle about it. You just want to use common sense. As long as you get the best and see that you’re not done in the eye—”

“‘Done in the eye’ is one of those expressions — one of many expressions, I am sorry to say — against which you need to be on your guard. Suppose, for instance, Miss Sakers had been present just now.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if she had been, and she wasn’t, anyway.”

“Well, I will not argue that point. I will come back to the original subject of discussion. You first of all tell me that no principle is required in the matter of shopping, and you then proceed distinctly to enunciate a principle — to get the best quality possible, and to avoid anything in the way of an overcharge. Now that, like most feminine principles, is absolutely superficial.”

“Come on, then,” said Eliza. “What’s your own principle? You won’t be happy till you’ve said it.”

“My own principle may be expressed in one word — compromise. I may buy things here, or I may buy them in London. Often they are cheaper in London than if I buy them here. This is notably the case with fish. And yet I sometimes think it advisable to buy things here which I might have obtained at a more satisfactory price in London.”

“Glad you told me that,” said Eliza, “because of course it will have to be stopped. We’ve got no money to throw away, and baby wants a lot of new things, and—”

“Just try and put that child out of your mind for one moment, and let me explain to you my reasons. I spoke just now about fish. As you are aware, I frequently bring fish back from the City in a basket. The difference is so considerable that it is worth-while. But can you imagine what my feelings are when I step down from the station with that fish-basket in my hand and meet the cart of our own local fishmonger?”

“Well, if Harris don’t like it, he should be more reasonable. So long as he behaves as if his blessed haddocks were gold-plated, he can’t expect people to go on dealing with him. Getting it direct from Grasby in the winter and from London in the hot weather saves a lot.”

“I am aware of it. Harris has entirely ceased to touch his hat to me, but I put up with that. Still, I feel it to be my duty, so far as I can, to encourage the industry and the enterprise of my humbler neighbours. Every week I smoke one ounce of tobacco, and I buy it from Smith at the corner — as pleasant-spoken and respectful a man as I could wish to meet. I could buy the same tobacco in London a halfpenny an ounce cheaper, which allowing for a fortnight’s holiday, makes a difference of two shillings and a penny in a year. I sacrifice that willingly, Only yesterday I came upon an instance of enterprise here in the High Street which I thought it my duty to encourage.”

“Oh, go on,” said Eliza. “Let’s hear the worst.”

“When you have heard it, I think you will be sorry for the tone you have taken. As I passed the shop of the new photographer, Mr. Higford, I saw an announcement in his window which led me to enter. I made a few inquiries, and I saw specimens. For the sum of eight shillings Mr. Higford makes a photograph of you in the ordinary way. He enlarges this photograph on porcelain and tints it in the natural colours, giving very much the effect of a water-colour painting. He showed me one which he had just finished of the stationmaster’s wife, and I can only say that I should have recognized it anywhere. What I am proposing, Eliza, is to make you a present of such a photograph.”

“It’s very kind of you, of course,” said Eliza, “but I don’t think I want to be photographed at my time of life. Even when I was a girl I didn’t use to photograph well — used to come out sort of peaky. I don’t know how it was. Somehow when you know you’re going to be photographed, your face seems to set stiff and your mouth goes crooked.”

“Well, Eliza,” I said, “what I was intending was to give you a photograph, not of yourself, but of one who is even dearer to you than yourself.”

Eliza said, “I should simply love it,” and kissed me violently.

“I think,” I said, “that it would do very well over the mantelpiece in the dining-room, just above the clock. The space on the wall there has always looked to me as if it was asking for something.”

“Yes,” said Eliza. “That’s where we’ll put it. We are more in the dining-room than we are in the drawing-room.”

I did not at the moment raise the question of the frame, but I had already seen something at Higford’s which took my fancy. It was a very broad frame, stained dark green. In fact, there was more frame than picture. On the wood in the upper right-hand corner was a small bronze thing, which I took at first to be a spider. On further examination it turned out to be a medallion of Julius Caesar. Higford said the registered name of it was the Art-in-the-Home frame.

I had already decided to be photographed in a sitting position by a table on which was a pile of correspondence. In one hand I should hold an open letter. I had decided on shepherd’s plaid trousers, Higford having mentioned that these came out particularly well, and I also made a note of his hint to keep the feet as far back as possible. If protruded, these get out of focus and are unnecessarily enlarged.

My appointment for Higford was for three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. At 2.45 I was ready to start, feeling a little nervous, but not without some emotions of pleasurable anticipation. Eliza came down the stairs carrying baby, and I could see at a glance that baby had his Sunday clothes on.

“Some people,” said Eliza, “have babies taken with no clothes on at all, but I can’t say that I think it’s quite nice. It seems a pity, too, when the child has got really good things, not to put them in the picture. I shan’t take the perambulator, I shall carry him. It’s no distance to go, anyhow.”

I saw at once there had been a misunderstanding, and wondered whether it would not be better to clear it up at once, On the whole I decided to let it go. Fathers are sent into the world in order to be sacrificed.

Eliza looked at me wonderingly. “What on earth has made you take and put on all your best clothes?” she said.

“Merely because I chose to do so. I had my reasons.”

“Well, you needn’t get so short about it. Has anything happened to put you out?”

I was unable to check a sardonic laugh. Something had indeed happened to put me out. “Nothing whatever,” I replied. “Attend to your own business and I will attend to mine.”

The child was photographed crawling on the table. Higford said that this was a novelty. To speak more correctly, the child’s clothes were photographed. Of the child you could see as much face as it then possessed and one fist. Babies cannot be expected to understand these things, and the fist had been thrust forward. In consequence it came out about twice the size of the face. For a production of this kind I did not think it worth-while to go to the expense of the Art-in-the-Home frame. We had an old frame up in the attic which could be made to do. Eliza seemed perfectly satisfied.

Personally, whenever I see that photograph hanging in its appointed place, I confess to a slight feeling of disgust. It is not in the least like the child, and could never have expected to be like the child. Babies ought not to be photographed at all. Eight shillings thrown in the gutter — that’s what I think about it.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

The Epsteins have gone, and on the whole I am not sorry, although we remained friends to the last. Eliza says that they were good-natured people and would have lent us anything they had got, and done anything in their power to oblige us. That is, I believe, true, as far as it goes. But they never had anything that we wanted, and there was never anything that they could do for us. On the other hand there was hardly an article in my house which the Epsteins had not borrowed at one time or another, and they were continually asking us to oblige them. I shall not lightly forget those black days when we had to take charge of the Epsteins’ cat.

I remember one occasion when, as it seems to me, Mr. Epstein was more than unusually unreasonable, and a good lot of tact was called for in dealing with the situation. I will narrate the circumstance.

For some time I had been in the habit of watering my garden with a can containing the water from the tap over the kitchen sink. Hearing through Pridgeon of an opportunity to acquire a short length of garden hose at what might be called a sacrificial price, I availed myself of it. This hose I was in the habit of fitting to the same tap. And then the water company, in their penny-wise-and-pound-foolish way, began to make themselves unpleasant about it. How they find these things out at all is what beats me. At any rate, after a considerable amount of argument on both sides (I pointing out that I was perfectly willing to utilize waste water from the bath, if they would provide the requisite fittings), I agreed to pay for a supply from a stand-pipe in the garden.

This was a great success and meant a considerable saving of labour. There were one or two trivial accidents, and, as I pointed out to Eliza, they might easily have been avoided. Anybody could see from the windows of the house that I was watering the garden, and it was only necessary to whistle before coming round the corner. Gladys neglected this simple precaution, and in consequence got it full in the face, and upset the perambulator which she was wheeling at the time. The girl simply loses her head in an emergency. The child was not injured in the least, and there was no occasion for Eliza to make any fuss about it. As I told her, the fault was not mine, and it was a thing which might have happened to anybody.

I must say I found the hose very convenient. The watering of the garden did not take half or a quarter of the time that it had once done. While engaged in the work, on more than one occasion I saw Mr. Epstein watching me from his window. He has no stand-pipe and no hose, and his lawn is baked brown. I detected: a look of admiration and envy on his face, which seemed to me satisfactory as far as it went. Knowing Epstein as I did, I might have known that it would not end there.

And then I received a letter from Mr. Epstein. It was ill expressed and wrongly punctuated, and the man evidently had no notion how many “r’s” there are in “embarrassed.” It contained slang expressions, such as “I don’t think” and “Not half.” But the meaning of it was only too clear. It was a request that the next time I watered my garden I would water his as well, throwing the water over the intervening fence, and first of all “singing out,” as he expressed it, in order that any of the Epstein family who happened to be in the garden might have time to withdraw. I showed the letter to Eliza simply as an instance of the length to which atrocious impertinence might drive a man.

“Well,” said Eliza, “you may just as well take and do it. You’ve got the water and they haven’t. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes, and it does you good to be out in the garden. One must keep on friendly terms with one’s neighbours. And by the way, you might be a bit more careful about that hose. It’s principally when you are changing it from one hand to the other. You seem to forget that the water is going on all the time, and no one knows what it’s going to hit next. That girl Gladys says she’s positively afraid to go into the garden nowadays.”

“Thank you,” I said, “but I do not think I have anything to learn in the management of a garden hose. If Gladys happens to have developed hysteria, that is not my fault. At the same time I do not propose to act as an unpaid jobbing gardener to Epstein. I wonder what he will ask next. He will expect me to go round after breakfast and black his boots before he starts for the City.”

“Well,” said Eliza, “you have got to answer his letter, and I don’t see what you can say.”

“I might, if I pleased, put it on the ground of simple commercial morality. I pay for the water supply for one garden, and not for the water supply for two gardens.”

“Yes. But what does Epstein care about that? For that matter, what do you care about it yourself? You diddled the water company as long as you could.”

“I do not agree with you, but it is all quite beside the point. I have no intention of telling Epstein anything of the sort.”

“Then what are you going to tell him?”

“If you will kindly wait a few minutes you shall see.”

I then stepped to my bureau and selected a sheet of our second-best notepaper. I wrote as follows:

“Dear Mr. Epstein, — Your favour of even date to hand. My own garden at this season claims very much of my time, but I shall be pleased to do what you request at the earliest opportunity.”

I showed this to Eliza.

“That seems all right,” she said. “So you’re going to do it after all.”

“I have said that I will do it at the earliest opportunity. But there is not going to be any opportunity. Mr. Epstein will be quite satisfied with my letter, the water company will not be cheated, and I myself shall not be inconvenienced.”

“Well, of all the lies I ever heard”

“Not lies, Eliza. Tact. Simply tact. Without it society could not exist.”

However, one day when I was in the City, Eliza herself deliberately watered the Epsteins’ garden with our hose and our water. I was extremely annoyed about it, and told her plainly that she was beginning to take rather too much upon herself. It was simply a waste of time to be diplomatic if other people’s gardens were watered behind your back in this way.

THE WATCH

Eliza had a letter from her brother Frank by the first post in the morning. He had been to the Derby and had had his watch and chain stolen. It was a valuable watch.

“It does seem hard luck,” said Eliza.

“That,” I said, “depends entirely on the way you look at it. I have no wish to pass any criticisms on your brother; Far from it. I myself do not attend race meetings. If he can reconcile it with his conscience, there is no more to be said on that head. Of course no intelligent man would take a valuable watch to a race meeting, and if he did, he would at an rate take particular care of it to see that it was not snatched. He has simply brought it on himself, and I hope it will be a lesson to him.”

“It’s all jolly well to talk like that,” said Eliza. “But you wouldn’t like it if you had your own watch stolen, and it may happen to you one of these days.”

“I think not,” I said. “For the last twenty years I have been going to and from the City. I have been in crowds where special warnings against pickpockets are issued. And I have never had my watch stolen. Why? Because I use ordinary care and intelligence.”

Nothing more was said on the subject at the time. On the following morning I had an appointment with a firm in Holborn before going to our office. I went there by the tube railway. There was a considerable crowd, as there generally is at this time in the morning, and I was hustled by two or three men in getting out of the lift. I thought nothing of it at the time.

My appointment was for ten sharp, and the clock was striking as I entered the office. I like habits of punctuality, and it annoyed me that I was kept waiting. After a few minutes my hand went somewhat impatiently to my watch.

My watch and chain were not there! Then I remembered that I had been hustled on leaving the lift. I do not exaggerate when I say that I broke into a cold perspiration. The loss of the watch was bad enough. It was a gold watch and had belonged to my grandfather. What was even worse was the shout of what people would say.

My first impulse was to go to Mr. Bagshawe at once to tell him what had happened and to request his permission to to Scotland Yard. I decided against this. The fact that I had lost my watch would not raise me in Mr. Bagshawe’s estimation. Far from it. It annoyed him to give anybody permission for anything. Reluctantly I came to the conclusion that I should have to leave it until the luncheon hour. It is very difficult to go through one’s routine work when one’s mind is distracted: All the time I was conscious that something was not in my waistcoat pocket which ought to have been there. I could picture to myself clever thieves removing all identification marks from that watch, or dropping the gold case into the melting pot, even while I sat dictating letters. It was a morning of the most absolute torture. I made one or two slight errors. I do not profess to be more than human.

I received very little consolation at Scotland Yard. I was asked for a description of the men who had hustled me. I said that they were short, and rather thick-set, and of a suspicious appearance. This did not seem to be enough, and I was not able to say more. However, thanks to methodical habits, I had the number of my watch and the address of the maker entered in my pocket-book, and these I was able to provide.

“Now do you think I shall get it back?” I asked eagerly.

“Can’t say,” said the man, who showed no excitement and very little interest. “We shall notify the pawnbrokers, of course, and if we hear anything we will let you know.”

We have in our office a young fellow named Gillivant, who is learning the business. He is well connected, and his parents would, I believe, be called opulent. But the allowance they make him is strictly limited, and he is naturally a man of very extravagant habits. He thinks nothing of losing fifteen shillings or a sovereign in an evening at bridge or some other game of chance. The consequence is that he is frequently pressed for small sums of ready money, and in order to obtain them he occasionally offers articles of his personal property for sale at sacrificial prices. It is not always safe to deal with him. I bought a fountain pen from him which did not turn out as expected, Still, as a general rule I can trust my own judgement, and when I heard Gillivant offering a new five-shilling watch in good going order for half a crown I pricked up my ears. The watch was right at the time, though, of course, that proved nothing. So far as I could judge the works were in good order. I subsequently bought it for two shillings and threepence.

The fact of the case is that I was a little shy about facing Eliza. It was most unfortunate that this should have occurred just after what I had said about Frank. Of course she would have to know sooner or later that I had lost my watch, but I thought that it would make for happiness in the home if I told her later, If she happened to ask me the time I could always tell it, keeping Gillivant’s watch hidden from view in the palm of my hand. If she asked me where the chain was, I could say that I was not wearing it now, which would be perfectly true, and that I considered it a temptation to thieves, which would also be perfectly true. Later I might rather take back what I had said about Frank, and point out that I had known several able and competent men who had lost their watches. And then one day I could let it leak out. With a little forethought and management life’s daily problems may be safely handled.

With my mind made easy by this resolution I was able to detect and remedy the slight errors which I had made in the morning. For instance, I wrote a letter to the firm I had been seeing in Holborn, commencing, “Confirming our conversation of this morning,” and going on to represent myself as having said what as a matter of fact I did not say.

When I got home that evening I went straight into the garden, removed my coat and waistcoat, and began to mow the lawn, When you have no waistcoat on, the question of your watch is not likely to be raised.

While I was engaged in this occupation Eliza came out of the house.

“This is a funny thing,” she said. “Why didn’t you put your watch and chain on this morning? The first time in our married life I have ever known you to forget it.”

To deal with a situation like that requires a mind that works like lightning. I am perhaps rather fortunate in possessing that type of mind.

“There is no mistake at all about it,” I said. “I have thought over what happened to your brother Frank. It is extremely improbable that any thieves would ever dare to treat me as they treated him, but I am determined to take no risks. That watch belonged to my grandfather, and when I am called to my rest I wish it to belong to my son. In future I shall wear a cheap watch in the City.”

“Have you just thought of that?” said Eliza.

“I have a complete answer to that question here,” I said, walking over to my waistcoat. “I have already procured the cheap watch I desired. Two shillings and threepence was all I gave for it. There are plenty of chances for a smart man with his eyes open.”

And the next day I looked in at Scotland Yard and explained. And this closed one of the most satisfactory incidents in my domestic career.

CIGARETTES AND ASHES

The spectacle of a closed shop in the midst of the busy traffic of the City is to me depressing. The shop which I have in my mind had for some time been occupied by a firm who seemed to be unaware that people who frequent the City are business men. It had offered gents’ hosiery and underclothing at prices far in excess of the value supplied, and in the final instance I understand that the said clothing was seized for rent. Then for a time the shop remained closed. Every day my eye fell on those blank shutters, and they seemed to me absolutely pitiful. It was a splendid position, and, given requisite capital, I could have taken that shop over and made money with it.

However, one day I found the shutters down, and the windows half covered with notices announcing a great sale of bankrupt stock. Between the notices could be seen boxes of cigars, clocks, cases of cutlery, Dresden figures, all manner of things. I just peeped inside, and saw two men in frock-coats, and a porter in a green baize apron. There was a background of packing cases. One of the men had curly black hair and a hooked nose, and may possibly have been of Spanish extraction. He jumped at me at once, and took me by the lapel of my coat.

“You was the man we were looking for,” he said. “We want your opinion of a cigarette. Nothing to pay. You just try it, and tell us what you think.”

I was a little surprised, but on the whole I rather liked the man’s manner.

“Well,” I said, “I do not suppose that my opinion is worth much, but if you wish me to try a cigarette I have no objection.”

He handed me his own cigarette case, which was of gold, or looked like it, and at the same time told the porter severely to get the gentleman a match.

“The cigarette seems to me quite good,” I said.

The curly-haired young man waved his hand.

“There you are,” he said. “I am much obliged to you. That confirms my judgement. We are selling bankrupt stuff here, and I had 1,300 of these cigarettes to sell. This brand fetches ten shillings a hundred in any tobacconist’s. I am not a rich man, but I bought a thousand of them on my own account; that was all I could afford to take. I am very glad to find I have not done wrong. Much obliged to you, sir. Good morning.”

“Just half a minute,” I said. “If you have kept a thousand yourself, you have still got three hundred to sell?”

“That is so,” he said. Then he turned to the porter, and changed his tone of voice.

“George, show this gentleman those boxes of Minaret cigarettes, and hurry up — don’t keep him waiting.”

“And what price are you asking for them?”

“In boxes or fifty each at the rate of seven shillings a hundred. Look here — I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I have got to sell this stuff, and the sooner the better. Give me fifteen shillings for the lot, and they are yours.”

He opened one of the boxes and there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.

“I am afraid they will get too dry,” I said, “buying so many at a time. I generally get packets of ten.”

“Well, what do you think?” said the young man. “Do you think I would have bought a thousand for myself if there was any chance they were not all right? They are not packed in card boxes; they are in sealed tins. Look at those for yourself.”

“Well,” I said, “it seems an advantageous offer. Fifteen shillings is a good deal of money; I should like to think about it.”

“Certainly, sir. By all means. Look in again about lunch-time, and if I have still got them—”

“You could not reserve them for me until then, I suppose?”

“I would with pleasure if I had my own way. The guv’nor won’t have it. You see, he has only taken this shop for the inside of a week, and everything has to be sold to the first man who snatches at it. If I keep those back, I risk my place.”

I thought it over, and finally decided to make the purchase. It was true that at my rate of consumption there were enough cigarettes to last me a year and a half, and they were far more expensive than those I generally purchased. But I was getting them at half price, and it was an opportunity which might not occur again.

I told Eliza that I had taken advantage of a bankrupt sale, and that for some time to come my cigarettes would cost me only half the usual price. She quite approved. These things must be done tactfully. Of course, if I had simply told her that I had bought three hundred cigarettes she would have been angry.

I finished the first tin of fifty in six weeks — rather sooner than I had expected, but I suppose the truth is that if you have a large stock of a thing you use it more freely. I then opened the second tin, and found it filled with the sweepings of a grate. I was on the verge of opening another tin, but there was something else which I thought I might try first.

“Look here,” I said to old Pridgeon; “I bought a few cigarettes the other day. You have seen me smoking them. The first box was A1; the second was no good at all. I have told you everything quite frankly. Now, then, there are four boxes left; would you like to take your chance and make a sporting bid for them?”

“Yes,” said Pridgeon; “I will give fourpence for the four.” This, of course, was not to be thought of. I opened the other four boxes myself. All I need say is that if Pridgeon had given me fourpence for the four he would have lost money on it.

Naturally, I have been looking for the people who sold me those things, but they only had the shop for a week, and, of course, they cannot be traced. But if ever I do meet that young gentleman with the curly black hair and the hooked nose, I should not be at all surprised if I lost my temper.

THE WASPS

Last year we had great trouble with wasps. Some men would, no doubt, have grumbled at the time, and then would have let the thing slide. But I am not that sort. I do not allow the grass to grow under my feet, and I take Time by the forelock. This year, long before there was any talk about wasps, I told Eliza that I proposed to buy some cyanide of potassium, and to rid ourselves of the pests effectively.

“Be careful how you get playing about with it,” said Eliza; “that is a poison, that is, and they think a lot of their cats next door.”

“I am acquainted with the law on the subject, Eliza, and I know what I am doing. If those cats come into our garden, that is an act of trespass, and they commit it entirely at their own risk.”

I purchased the cyanide of potassium at the local chemist’s, going through the usual formalities, signing the book and stating the purpose for which I required it. I asked him if he believed it was suitable for the purpose, and he said that it was first class.

Just about this time some new people, of the name of Bodgers, had taken “The Nest.” I was considering the propriety of advising Eliza to call upon them, when one morning I received a note from Mr. Bodgers. It was in the third person, and was to the effect that if I wished to torture a dog or any other dumb animal, Mr. Bodgers would be much obliged if I did not do it in the small hours of the morning, as the noise kept them awake.

I have no dog. I have tortured nothing. The only noises to which he soul possibly refer were those made by baby, who on the night in question was suffering from some digestive trouble. I wrote a curt note in reply that I had received Mr. Bodgers’s note, and that | treated it with contempt, and I told Eliza at the same time that any possibility of social terms, or even of communication, between “The Nest” and ourselves was now definitely at an end.

It may, at first sight, seem that this incident has nothing whatever to do with wasps. Every year added to my experience teaches me that lots of things have to do with lots of other things one would never have expected.

I waited with my bottle of cyanide of potassium with feelings of pleasurable anticipation. I think I should almost have been disappointed if it had not been a good wasp year. I was not disappointed in that way.

One Sunday evening, as we sat at dinner, I was feeding myself with my fork, and waving my knife round my head at the same time. Eliza said, “About time you got to work with that poisonous stuff of yours, isn’t it?”

I replied that I had not forgotten it — that I already had the matter in hand.

On the following day the baby was stung; so was Gladys; so was Eliza; but providentially I escaped. Eliza said she did not see what I had bought that poison for if I did not mean to use it. She asked if I was saving it up in order to drink it myself.

“Talk about things that you understand,” I said; “you appear to be under the impression that one first catches the wasp, and then forces the cyanide of potassium down its throat with a gun. It is not so. Even if such a method were efficacious, it would be too prolix, only one wasp being killed at a time. By watering the ground over and round their nests with this solution, I destroy the whole of the wasps; absolutely not one of them can possibly escape.”

“Well, I don’t care how you do it,” said Eliza, “so long as you do it. What is it you are stopping for?”

“So far, I have not been able to locate the nests.”

“They cannot be so difficult to see,” said Eliza. “The dustman tells me that there are two nests at Bodgers’s next door.”

“Ah!” I said. “That explains much.”

A few days’ studying of the habits of these insects showed me that the dustman had been perfectly correct. The wasps slept next door but boarded at my house. If I had been on social terms with Bodgers I should have called round and offered him the cyanide of potassium, with instructions how to use it. As things stood between us, this was, of course, out of the question. Etiquette is etiquette, it is what the Americans call the unwritten law. Finally, I sent a perfectly polite note to Mr. Bodgers saying that I bad observed that he had two wasps’ nests in his garden, and that it would be to his own benefit, as well as to mine, if he got rid of them, His only reply was that the next time I started poking my nose over his garden wall he hoped those wasps would bite it.

And there, of course, the matter stood.

FOUR QUARTS

“Eliza,” I said one evening, “I had today a little arithmetical problem of most extraordinary interest brought to me. I personally solved it almost at once, but perhaps I am something of an expert in such matters. I wonder if you would care to hear it.”

“There’s an arithmetical thingamy that I can’t solve, and that’s the price they have the cheek to ask for cauliflowers. And no bigger than your fist when you’ve got them.”

“Well,” I said, “this little puzzle has nothing to do with cauliflowers. A boy was sent to draw water. He was given a five-quart jug and a three-quart jug, and he was told to bring back four quarts exactly — neither more nor less.”

“Then all I can say is that I don’t call that a fair and reasonable way to treat a boy, and a boy of any spirit would have told them so. There’s enough trouble about a day’s work, anyhow, without going out to make trouble. Why couldn’t they have taken and given him just the five-quart jug, and then — if they wanted to be so nasty particular — they could have measured it off afterwards.”

“We are not concerned with the wisdom or otherwise of the parents who gave the boy those instructions. What we have to do is to find out how the boy did it. Perhaps the parents merely wished to test the boy’s skill in arithmetic.”

“Then why send him half over the country on a fool’s errand with those two great heavy jugs? They might just as well have told him to work out the sum in his head. That would have been the most sensible thing to do.”

“And that is precisely what I am doing. Work it out in your head, Eliza, if you are capable of it. What would you have done in that boy’s place?”

“Well, to start with, I should have left the three-quart jug at home. The less crockery is taken out of doors the better. It may only be luck, but I’ve never been at a picnic yet where there wasn’t something broken.”

“Now come to the point, please. How would you get the four quarts?”

“Simple enough. I should fill the five-quart jug four-fifths—”

“But how would you know that it was just four-fifths full?”

“Use my eyes, silly, same as anybody else. And I’ll bet I wouldn’t be wrong by half a pint either way.”

“That’s not the right answer. The thing has got to be exact — four quarts, neither more nor less, as I told you.”

“Well, if you know how it’s done, I don’t need to worry about it. What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch at all. The method adopted is somewhat complicated, but I think you’ll admit that it is a masterpiece of ingenuity. Let me see now — one must get the different steps in the right order. Ah, yes; I think I recall it. You first of all fill the five-quart jug. Then you pour that away and—”

“Hold on,” said Eliza. “You’re coming out by the same hole you went in at. That can’t be right.”

“True. An absurd slip — thank you for calling my attention to it. You first of all fill the five-quart jug. Then you fill the three-quart jug.”

“That’s eight quarts you’ve got already. Full up. Turn off the tap.”

“I think, Eliza, that I should get on quicker if I were interrupted less. Yes, now I have it. You fill the big jug, and from that fill the small jug. You then empty the small jug, and — No; that’s not it. Half a moment.”

“Take your own time,” said Eliza. “And you needn’t look so worried about it. It’s only make-up. It isn’t as if you’d ever have to do it.”

“I do not care to allow myself to be beaten by a thing of this kind — more especially as the first time I heard it I got the answer practically in a flash. Twenty-five minutes were the utmost that it took me. You fill the small jug. Then you fill the — No, again; that’s not it. Perhaps you could oblige me with the back of an envelope?”

“I can give you a coal circular, These coal companies keep you fed up with waste paper.”

“It will do,” I aid, producing my silver (hallmarked) pencil-case. Eliza went upstairs to put baby to bed. I had covered the back of that circular with figures before I arrived at what seemed to me the root of the difficulty.

“Well,” said Eliza, when she came down again, “have you got it now?”

“Practically, yes. I have proved to my satisfaction that though my method of working was correct, I must have made some mistake in stating the question. It could not have been four quarts that the boy had to bring back. I am inclined to think that it should have been nine quarts.”

“Well, the two jugs together only held eight. How was he to bring back the odd quart? In his hat?”

“If it was not nine it must have been some other number, but it could not have been four. It is absolutely impossible with those two jugs to measure four quarts exactly.”

“Why, that it isn’t. I hadn’t meant to worry about it, but it rather stuck in my head while I was giving baby his bath. You can do it two ways.”

“One will be enough. Pray let me hear it.”

“Fill your big jug, measure off three quarts into the little one and pour them away. Then shift the two quarts that are left into the little jug, and fill the big one again. That gives you two quarts in the small jug and five in the big one. Fill up the small jug from the big one, and you’ve got three quarts in one and four in the other, and four’s what you want, ain’t it, silly?”

“Kindly repeat that slowly.”

“Four’s what you want, ain’t it, silly?”

“I meant, repeat the process.”

She did so. I suppose that in a sort of rough-and-ready makeshift way she was correct, though her solution by no means gave me the impression of ingenuity that I had noticed so much in my own.

“But I don’t call that a problem,” said Eliza. “It’s only a silly old catch.”

“I admit that a greater problem lies in the working of the human mind. How was it that I had the solution this morning, but had not got it this afternoon?”

“Oh, that’s nothing. I had my scissors half an hour ago, but I can’t put my hand on them now. I wish you’d get up and see if you’re sitting on them,”

I was. As I told Eliza rather sharply, her habit of leaving things about on chairs will, one of these days, lead to a serious accident.

MENIAL WORK

“I do not know if you are aware of it, Eliza,” I said, “but I could simply write my name on top of the piano in the drawing-room.”

“Well, it ain’t the place for it,” said Eliza. “Go and write your name somewhere else.”

“Do not pretend to misunderstand me. You know perfectly well what I mean. There is a thick layer of dust on the top of that piano, What does that mean?”

“I should think it means that Jane forgot to dust the top of the piano. Don’t look so worried about it. It won’t kill anybody.”

“That is not the point. I insist upon decency and order in my house. Jane must dust that room at once.”

“Then you had better run out and tell her so. I sent her out to the fishmonger’s. And the other girl can’t do it, because she has got baby to look after. And I can’t do it, because I have got to put my hat on so as to be ready for Miss Sakers. You had better do it yourself.”

“I will,” I said. “If it is necessary for the master of the house to do the menial work of the house, I will do it. I trust it will make you ashamed of yourself, Eliza.”

She said that she trusted it would not, and went upstairs whistling. If I have told her once I have told her twenty times that I do not consider whistling a ladylike accomplishment.

I admit that I was angry, and I had a right to be. I pay forty pounds a year for my house, and I keep up a staff of two servants at very considerable expense, and now I was told that if I wanted the piano dusted I must dust it myself. I went into the kitchen, snatched up a large blue duster from the table, and went back to the drawing-room. At that moment the front-door bell rang. As Eliza was putting on her hat, and Gladys was seeing to the baby, and Parker was out, there was only one thing to be done. I thrust the duster into my pocket and opened the door to Miss Sakers, passing the thing off with a few words of humorous apology.

While we were waiting for Eliza, I took Miss Sakers out to see one or two little improvements which I had been making in the garden. She was good enough to say that she only wished her own gardener could be present to see how things ought to be done. It is always pleasant to chat with a lady of intelligence, and by the time that Eliza was ready I had recovered my good-humour. I had also completely forgotten, temporarily, the incident of the piano.

Eliza and Miss Sakers went to attend a meeting of the Flannel Society. This is a useful institution for the manufacture of flannel garments and their distribution to the deserving poor. While the members are at work, one of them reads aloud. I had at one time thought of offering my services for this purpose. Natural feelings of delicacy with regard to the garments manufactured restrained me.

The afternoon being fine, I went out to watch the cricket on the recreation-ground. Although no charge is made, some of the best people in our neighbourhood are frequently to be found there on a Saturday afternoon.

I do not actually play cricket myself. As a boy I made some attempt in that direction, but did not meet with a sufficient measure of success to justify me in carrying the thing further. If I do a thing I like to do it well, and the wisdom of this principle cannot, I think, be doubted. However, I trust that I am enough of a sportsman to enjoy watching the game.

I cannot tell exactly how it happened, but I am inclined to think that in watching the course of the ball the sun caught my eyes. At any rate, I sneezed suddenly and violently. It was not till it was all over that I was aware that I had produced that large blue duster in mistake for my pocket-handkerchief. I returned it to my pocket as quickly as possible, but I gathered from the expression of two silly girls who were standing near me that it had been observed. I therefore walked away and joined another group. As I approached the other group some boys began to giggle. I was utterly at a loss to understand it. The thing went on. Everybody who saw me began to smile. I was not aware that, as a rule, there is anything absurd in my personal appearance, and the incident annoyed me. I left the cricket-field.

On my way home I met Gladys wheeling the baby in the perambulator. As soon as they saw me the child screamed with terror, and Gladys burst out laughing. I told her sharply to be a little more careful what she was doing, and passed on. Once in my own room, I saw, of course, what had happened. That duster had been used for some grossly improper purpose. I removed the black marks from my face — they were on the nose principally — and went down to speak about it.

Eliza had just returned from the Flannel Society. She began before I could get a word in.

“I thought you said you were going to dust that piano yourself. You made enough fuss about it.”

I gave one short, sarcastic laugh and walked straight out into the garden.

I sometimes think that more things of this kind happen to me than happen to any other man, and I wonder why.

AN INDEPENDENT OPINION

I really had no idea that it was becoming at all noticeable. It is true that the man who cut my hair mentioned it, but I could understand his motive. He simply wanted to sell me a bottle of his own rubbish. I told him pretty sharply to get on with his work and not to pass remarks.

Eliza said, “I was looking over the stairs when you were standing in the hall this morning. I don’t know whether you know it or not, but soon you will not have a hair left on your head.”

“That,” I said, “is an exaggeration. I am perfectly well aware that my hair is less luxuriant than it once was. But I still have ample. It depends upon the way in which I brush it. Brushed in the right direction, you would hardly detect any sign of baldness.”

“I should go and brush it in the right direction,” said Eliza.

This was an absurd remark, as it was already brushed in the right direction, There is nothing I detest more than interference of this kind. It can do no good, and it is in the worst possible taste.

At the office old Pridgeon, who is my subordinate, said, “It’s lucky you’ve got a berth, and are not looking for one.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because if you were looking for one you would not get it.”

“Do you think so?” I said coldly. “You happen to be wrong. I venture to say that there are plenty of firms in the City who would simply snap at me, and be glad to have the chance. My testimonials—”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Pridgeon. “They go by appearance nowadays, and they’d spot that circular bald place at the back of your head at once. Seems to add ten years to your age. I wonder you don’t do something for it.”

“What is your recommendation?” I asked, sarcastically.

“Ordinary paraffin. Rub it well into the scalp. Marvellous effect that has.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I am not at present thinking of making any change, but if I were applying for a new berth I think the appearance of dignity and experience would not detract from my chances, but that a strong smell of paraffin possibly might. In future you can keep your advice until it is asked for, Pridgeon.”

Next morning Eliza said that her poor dear mother had a recipe for a hair restorer which had done wonders. She would see if she could find it. There were several things in it. So far as she could remember, it was principally paraffin.

“Understand once and for all, Eliza, that I am not going to use any form of hair restorer, and that I do not wish the subject to be discussed. In the first place, I am not going bald. It is merely that my hair is a little thinner than it formerly was on the top. In the second place, if I were going bald, it would be a positive advantage to me in the City. My appearance of youth has always been against me. You are making far too much fuss about it. Nobody else ever notices it.”

The next day I was working in Mr. Bagshawe’s room. I was sitting, and he was standing behind me. Presently he said, “How long have you been with us?”

“Very nearly sixteen years now, sir. And I hope to your satisfaction.”

“More or less,” he said, in his grudging way. “I have had worse men in the office, and better. What made me ask was that I see you are getting as bald as a coot.”

Naturally, with Mr. Bagshawe one adopts a different manner.

“Only too true, sir,” I said. “Extraordinary thing, too, because in most respects I am supposed to be younger than my years.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bagshawe. “You haven’t learnt as much as you might have done in the time, if that’s what you mean.”

It was, of course, not at all what I meant, but I did not think it worth-while to argue the point. He had been to the dentist that morning, and was not at his best, and his temper is always a weak point with him.

That evening I overheard Eliza saying to the baby, “You’ll soon have more hair on the top of your head than your daddy’s got — won’t you, ducky?”

I asked her to be good enough to stop that nonsense, and to let me have no repetition of it.

Although I did not admit it, I was slightly worried. I could understand the hairdresser’s assistant, and I attached no importance to him. Pridgeon’s remarks I put down to simple jealousy. Mr. Bagshawe rarely misses a chance to say something unpleasant, if he can find one. Eliza, in all probability, was simply actuated by a desire to try her mother’s recipe for the hair restorer. Women are always fond of concocting things of this kind. What I wanted was an independent opinion, and it seemed to me that I might as well apply for it frankly to young Gillivant.

“Gillivant,” I said, “I am going to put rather a curious question to you. Has it struck you of late that I am getting at all bald?”

“You want an absolutely candid answer?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, it has not struck me. It could not have struck me, because, of course, you are not going bald. It was only yesterday or it may be the day before, that I was saying to somebody or other that you didn’t look your years. I am sorry if this annoys you, but it is a fact. I dare say it would be an actual benefit to you if you were going bald.”

I was not annoyed at all.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Well, people may say what they like, but there is no doubt in my mind that a reasonable amount of baldness gives a kind of dignity to a man.”

“I’ve heard something of the kind,” I admitted.

“You may take it from me that it is a fact. One of my uncles went bald when he was only thirty, and he told me himself that he felt the gain in general respect at once. When people meet a bald man, they say to themselves, ‘It’s no good monkeying with him. He’s been about, and he knows the world.’”

“Well, Gillivant,” I said, “you may be right. At any rate, I am much obliged to you for your opinion. Good evening.”

“Half a minute,” said Gillivant. “I am getting some money in on Saturday. Strictly speaking, it ought to have come on Thursday, but I hear it won’t be till Saturday. That will enable me to repay then the eighteen-pence that you very kindly advanced.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” I said.

“I thought you would be. I was wondering if you would care to make the debt up to five shillings, as until Saturday I am practically without means. If you wanted any security, I have got a set of studs that—”

I may have been wrong, but I happened to have some loose silver in my pocket at the time. On the understanding that the loan was until Saturday only, I advanced a further three shillings and sixpence.

The curious thing is that I had somehow a kind of feeling in my mind that he had earned it.

THE UNEXPECTED VISIT

It was a hot Sunday afternoon in August. Eliza and the baby were out in the garden. I thought myself that it would be cooler in the house. The sofa in the drawing-room is particularly comfortable, and I occasionally rest there on Sunday afternoons, though I rarely close my eyes. I was just drawing down the blinds of the drawing-room window when I saw, to my astonishment, a large private motor-car up in front of our house. I came to the very natural conclusion that something must have gone wrong with the machinery of the car.

And then, to my great surprise, the door of the car opened, and out stepped Mr. Bagshawe. He was wearing a light tweed suit and a straw hat, and I had never seen him in such a costume in my life before. I had never even imagined him in any other clothes than those which he habitually wore in the City. But still it was unmistakably Mr. Bagshawe. And, presumably, he had come to call upon us, although he had never given me the slightest hint of any such intention on his part.

I rarely lose my head in an emergency. I decided at once not to let Parker answer the bell, but to go to the door myself. Such, I understand, is the etiquette on the occasion of a royal visit, and this was the same thing, though on a smaller scale.

“Hallo!” said Mr. Bagshawe. “Surprised to see me, ain’t you? Well, I didn’t come to see you. I can do that any day of the week. I happened to be motoring in this part, and I thought I’d call on my godson. And if your wife offers me a cup of tea I shan’t refuse it.”

I took him through into the garden, and really it was most unfortunate. Eliza was lying at full length on the grass, and the baby was climbing over her. We are well provided with garden chairs, and there was no necessity for anything of the kind.

I expected at least that Eliza would apologize for the extremely undignified position in which she had been found. But she did nothing of the kind, and Mr. Bagshawe did not seem to expect it. In fact, when I offered to bring a chair for him, he said that he would prefer to sit on the grass, too. He began talking to baby, and the poor child, knowing no better, took to him at once.

Presently Mr. Bagshawe said to me: “Look here; you go for a run in my car for half an hour. My man will take you anywhere you like. I want to have a talk to your wife and to this young gentleman here.”

I was a little surprised, and at first not particularly pleased. However, I humoured him, as I generally do, and said that I should find the drive most enjoyable. The driver seemed a very respectful and nicely-spoken man. He touched his hat to me, and asked me if I would like the car open or shut. Mr. Bagshawe had had it shut on account of the dust. I said that I personally should prefer it open. It is not of much use to drive about in a handsome private car unless people can see that you are doing it. In the course of the drive I met several acquaintances, which was satisfactory, although I do not know why they wore that puzzled look. I determined that if the thing was to be done at all it should be done handsomely, and on my return I offered the driver two shillings. He thanked me in a most respectful way, but said that it was more than his place was worth to take it. It was strictly against Mr. Bagshawe’s orders. This also was very satisfactory.

I found Eliza and Mr. Bagshawe having tea in the garden. The baby was still there. He should, of course, have been sent up to the nursery, but it appeared that Mr. Bagshawe had asked that he might remain. Eliza was chattering nineteen to the dozen, and anybody might have thought she had known Mr. Bagshawe all her life. I could only hope that she had shown a certain amount of care and tact in what she said to him during my absence.

After tea Mr. Bagshawe produced a briar pipe from his pocket and lit it. It was not even a good briar pipe, and he said that he had given fourpence for it, and seemed rather proud of the transaction. He told me where I could get one like it, and I replied that I should not hesitate to avail myself of the opportunity. But I must confess that I was surprised. In the City after luncheon Mr. Bagshawe always smokes one cigar. He smokes another on his way back from business. I should have supposed it to be an impossibility for him to smoke anything except a cigar, and a very expensive cigar, too.

He remained altogether for one hour and a half. I accompanied him to his car when he left, expecting that he would take that opportunity to confide in me his motive in coming. But he did nothing of the kind. He said that I had got a snug little place, and that if I liked he would give me a shilling for the baby. He was actually being jocose. I may add that on the following morning I heard him talk to a clerk who had put two letters in the wrong envelopes. Nobody on earth could have imagined that this was the same man that I had entertained on Sunday afternoon.

When I rejoined Eliza in the garden I said to her:

“I must give you a word of warning about Mr. Bagshawe. I do not, of course, know what he said to you, but I am familiar with his habit of depreciation. I have no doubt whatever that I could easily explain anything he said about me, and even give you his reason for having said it. He is naturally cantankerous. I believe, however, that his bark is worse than his bite.”

“What are you talking about?” said Eliza. “I think he is the very nicest and kindest old gentleman I ever met in my life. He did not say very much about you, but what he did say you would have liked.”

“You do not happen to remember the exact words?”

“Not to swear to them. It was when he was talking about the business.”

“Mr. Bagshawe talked about his business to you!” As a surprise this really reached the limit.

“Yes. He is not the least bit like what you described. I got on with him like a house on fire. Lots of interesting things he told me. He has got no children himself — had two, and they both died. Lucky that baby took to him, wasn’t it? Oh, and he talked about my business, too.”

“I have yet to learn that you have any business.”

“I mean the money I had from mother. He thinks I could do better with it. Tell me, is Mr. Bagshawe’s business perfectly sound? Would it be safe to put my money into it?”

“There are larger businesses in the city of London, but I will guarantee to you that there is none sounder. I have access to the figures, and I know what I am talking about. The Bank of England is wildcat compared with Bagshawe and Co. But a need not make any mistake, my dear, about your money. You will never get a chance to put it into Bagshawe’s business. He has got all the capital he wants, and can have as much over again by putting his head out of the window and whistling for it.”

“Yes, he said that he did not need capital, but that he could not see his way to give you even a small partnership unless you — or I, on your account — had money invested in the concern.”

•   •   •

It is an extremely difficult thing to describe one’s emotions at the supreme moments of one’s life. I was pleased, but still more I was astounded. On more than one occasion Mr. Bagshawe had gone out of his way to declare that never, under any circumstances, need I expect to be taken into partnership. I pressed Eliza with questions, and never have I regretted more her inability to remember the exact words used. It appeared, however, that Mr. Bagshawe told her that he had once had as his partner a man with plenty of money, considerable knowledge, and no steadiness. I knew, of course, to whom he referred. He was now thinking of trying the experiment of taking a man with less capital and knowledge, but on whose steadiness he could absolutely rely.

It was rather a question to my mind whether I should open the subject to Mr. Bagshawe on the following morning when I went to business. Eliza said that I had better do nothing of the kind, and wait until he started upon it. As she seemed to have the management of the affair pretty well in her own hands, I accepted this suggestion. Mr. Bagshawe kept me for one hour and a half after ordinary business hours, and it was only during the last half-hour that he spoke of the subject at all. He then said six things about myself, and five of them were distinctly uncomplimentary; in fact, he had quite returned to his normal business manner. But still, it did appear that he seriously contemplated taking me into partnership.

Weeks have elapsed since then, and the final details are not yet arranged. But there is very little doubt that the thing will go through. Ambition no longer has anything to offer me. In future my interests and activities will be concentrated entirely in the firm, and I shall have no time for any further record of those scenes from my domestic life on which I have hitherto been engaged. I can only hope in conclusion that the advice which they contain, and the example which they offer, may be of service to others in their upward career.

ELIZA
AND THE SPECIAL

BONUS STORY
from “The Red Cross Story Book”
by Famous Novelists
Serving in His Majesty’s Forces
1915

“Eliza!” I said, after we had retired to the drawing-room, as we almost always do after our late dinner nowadays, unless of course the lighting of an extra fire is involved, “Eliza, I have this afternoon come to rather an important decision. I must ask you to remember the meaning of the word decision. It means that a thing is decided. It may be perfectly natural to you to beg me not to risk the exposure to the weather, and the possible attacks by criminals or German spies, but where my conscience has spoken I am, so to speak, adamant, (if you would kindly cease playing with the cat, you would be able to pay more attention to what I am saying). What I want you to realise is that no entreaties or arguments can possibly move me. This nation is at present plunged—”

“By the way,” said Eliza, “you don’t mind my interrupting, but I’ve just thought of it. Miss Lakers says she can’t think why you don’t offer yourself as a special, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t, either.”

“This, Eliza,” I said, “is one of the most extraordinary coincidences that have befallen me in the whole course of my life. If an author were to put such a thing in a book, every reader would remark on its improbability. But the fact remains — at the very moment when you spoke I was on the point of telling you that I had decided to become a special constable.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Eliza. “I’ll tell Miss Lakers. Wonder you didn’t think of it before. Anything in the evening paper tonight?”

“You are hardly taking my decision in the way that might have been expected,” I said. “However, we will let that pass. We must now take the necessary steps.”

“What do you mean?” said Eliza. “You just go to the station and—”

“I was not thinking of that. There is this question of exposure to the weather. A warm waistcoat — sufficiently low at the back to give protection to the kidneys — is, I understand, essential. We must also procure a flask.”

“Well, I shouldn’t if I were you. If you take whiskey when you’re on duty, and then anything happens, you only put yourself in the wrong.”

“My dear Eliza,” I said, “I was not dreaming of taking stimulants while on duty. Afterwards, perhaps, in moderation, but not during. I was referring to one of those flasks which keep soup or cocoa hot for a considerable period. This question of exposure to the weather is rather more serious than you seem to—”

“Oh, that kind of flask! Well, that’s different. And do be more careful when you’re uncrossing your legs. You as near as possible kicked the cat that time.”

As I told her, she had quite failed to grasp the situation or to take a proper interest in it. Her reply, that I was too funny, simply had no bearing on the subject.

•   •   •

I am not a snob. Far from it. But I do think that in the special constabulary a little more regard might be paid to social status. I was required for certain hours of the night to guard a small square building connected with the waterworks. It was in a desperately lonely spot, fully a hundred yards from the main road and approached by a footpath across a desolate field. I make no complaint as to that. Unless a man has pretty good nerves he had better not become a special constable. But I do complain, and with good reason, that in this task I was associated with Hopley.

Hopley is a plumber, in quite a small way. Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was merely an employee of the firm in which I am now a partner, I gave Hopley some work. At the time of taking the order he called me “sir,” and was most respectful. Later, he used very coarse language, and said he should not leave my kitchen until the account had been settled. I remember this because it was the last time that I had to pawn my watch.

Fortunately, Hopley seemed to have forgotten the incident and to have forgotten me. On the other hand he seemed quite oblivious of the fact that there was any social barrier between us. He always addressed me as an equal, and even as an intimate friend. Making allowances for the unusual circumstances, the nation being at war, I did not put him back in his place. But after all, I ask myself, was it necessary? With a little more organisation it would not have happened.

I will admit that I found him useful at drill and generally tried to be next him. He seemed to know about drill, and gave me the required pull or push which makes so much difference.

But when we two were guarding that building, I found him most depressing. He took a pessimistic view of the situation. He said that any special who was put to guard a waterworks was practically sentenced to death, because the Germans had got the position of every waterworks in the kingdom charted, and the Zeppelins had their instructions. Then he talked over the invasion of England, and the murder of a special constable, and told ghost stories. By day I could see, almost before Eliza pointed it out, that an incendiary bomb would do more active work in a gasometer than in a reservoir. But in the darkness of the small hours I am — well, distinctly less critical.

And I may add that the only mistake we have made yet was entirely due to Hopley. It was a nasty, foggy night and I saw a shadowy form approaching. I immediately went round to the other side of the building to report to Hopley, and he said that this was just the sort of night the Germans would choose for some of their dirty work. It was he who instructed me about taking cover and springing out at the last minute. We sprang simultaneously, Hopley on one side and myself on the other, and if it had been anybody but Eliza we should have made a smart job of it. I had forgotten my cocoa flask and Eliza was bringing it to the place where I was posted. This was unfortunate for Hopley, as she hit him in the face with the flask. I think that I personally must have slipped on a banana-skin, or it may have been due to the sudden surprise at hearing Eliza’s voice. Eliza said she was sorry about Hopley’s nose, but that we really ought not to play silly jokes like that when on duty, because we might possibly frighten somebody.

•   •   •

The other night I was discussing with Hopley the possibility of my being made a sergeant.

“Not a chance,” he said. “No absolute earthly, old sport.” And then he passed his hand in a reflective way over his nose. “But if only your missus could have joined,” he said, “she’d have been an inspector by now.”