Reginald...............................................................................................................................................................1

Saki (H.H. Munro)...................................................................................................................................1

I did itI should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops' gardenparty against his

We all make mistakes occasionally. ``They know you're here, and they'll think it so funny if you don't go.

``I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a prospective wife for Wumplesor a husband, is

it?'' (Reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, other than sartorial.) ``And I am expected to undergo social

``Reginald! It's nothing of the kind, only I'm sure Mrs. McKillop would be pleased if I brought you. Young

men of your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at her gardenparties.''

``There will be very few of you there, if that is what you mean. But seriously, there won't be any great strain

upon your powers of endurance; I promise you that you shan't have to play croquet, or talk to the

Archdeacon's wife, or do anything that is likely to bring on physical prostration. You can just wear your

sweetest clothes and a moderately amiable expression, and eat chocolatecreams with the appetite of a blase'

Reginald shut his eyes. ``There will be the exhaustingly uptodate young women who will ask me if I have

seen San Toy; a less progressive grade who will yearn to hear about the Diamond jubileethe historic

event, not the horse. With a little encouragement, they will inquire if I saw the Allies march into Paris. Why

are women so fond of raking up the past? They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe

``I'll order lunch for one o'clock; that will give you two and a half hours to dress in.''

Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew that my point was gained. He was debating

During the drive to the McKillops' Reginald was possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be

accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more

than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops' lawn, I established him near a seductive

dish of marrons glace's, and as far from the Archdeacon's wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic

distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he had seen San Toy.

It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been having quite an enjoyable chat with my hostess,

and had promised to lend her The Eternal City and my recipe for rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to

offer a kind home for her third Persian kitten, when I perceived, out of the corner of my eye, that Reginald

was not where I had left him, and that the marrons glace's were untasted. At the same moment I became

aware that old Colonel Mendoza was essaying to tell his classic story of how he introduced golf into India,

and that Reginald was in dangerous proximity. There are occasions when Reginald is caviare to the Colonel.

``My dear Colonel,'' purred Reginald, ``fancy admitting such a thing! Such a giveaway for one's age! I

wouldn't admit being on this planet in '76.'' (Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being

The Colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained great ripeness, and Reginald, ignoring my efforts to

intercept him glided away to another part of the lawn. I found him a few minutes later happily engaged in

teaching the youngest Rampage boy the approved theory of mixing absinthe, within full earshot of his

As soon as I had broken up this unpromising tetea`tete and settled Reginald where he could watch the

croquet players losing their tempers, I wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations at

the point where they had been interrupted. I did not succeed in running her down at once, and eventually it

``Your cousin is discussing Zaza with the Archdeacon's wife; at least, he is discussing, she is ordering her

She spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie

``If you don't mind,'' I said hurriedly, ``I think we'd like our carriage ordered too,'' and I made a forced march

I found every one talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except

Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, faraway look that a volcano might

wear just after it had desolated entire villages. The Archdeacon's wife was buttoning up her gloves with a

concentrated deliberation that was fearful to behold. I shall have to treble my subscription to her Cheerful

At that particular moment the croquet players finished their game, which had been going on without a

symptom of finality during the whole afternoon. Why, I ask, should it have stopped precisely when a

counterattraction was so necessary? Every one seemed to drift towards the area of disturbance, of which the

chairs of the Archdeacon's wife and Reginald formed the stormcentre. Conversation flagged, and there

settled upon the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawnwhen your neighbours don't happen

There were symptoms of a stampede. The Archdeacon's wife looked at me. Kipling or some one has

described somewhere the look a foundered camel gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate.

The peptonized reproach in the good lady's eyes brought the passage vividly to my mind.

``Reginald, it's getting late, and a seamist is coming on.'' I knew that the elaborate curl over his right

``Never, never again, will I take you to a gardenparty. Never.... You behaved abominably.... What did the

A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed over Reginald's face.

``After all,'' he said, ``I believe an apricot tie would have gone better with the lilac waistcoat.''

I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I don't want a ``George, Prince of Wales''

There ought (he continued) to be technical education classes on the science of presentgiving. No one seems

to have the faintest notion of what any one else wants, and the prevalent ideas on the subject are not

There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who ``knows a tie is always useful,'' and sends you

some spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road. It might have been

useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served the double purpose of

supporting the branches and frightening away the birdsfor it is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of

commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.

Then there are aunts. They are always a difficult class to deal with in the matter of presents. The trouble is

that one never catches them really young enough. By the time one has educated them to an appreciation of

the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in the West End, they die, or quarrel with the family, or

do something equally inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is always so precarious.

There is my Aunt Agatha, par exemple, who sent me a pair of gloves last Christmas, and even got so far as to

choose a kind that was being worn and had the correct number of buttons. Butthey were nines! I sent

them to a boy whom I hated intimately: he didn't wear them, of course, but he could havethat was where

the bitterness of death came in. It was nearly as consoling as sending white flowers to his funeral. Of course I

wrote and told my aunt that they were the one thing that had been wanting to make existence blossom like a

rose; I am afraid she thought me frivolousshe comes from the North, where they live in the fear of

Heaven and the Earl of Durham. (Reginald affects an exhaustive knowledge of things political, which

furnishes an excellent excuse for not discussing them.) Aunts with a dash of foreign extraction in them are the

most satisfactory in the way of understanding these things; but if you can't choose your aunt, it is wisest in

Even friends of one's own set, who might be expected to know better, have curious delusions on the subject. I

am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayya'm. I gave the last four that I received to the

liftboy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Liftboys

Personally, I can't see where the difficulty in choosing suitable presents lies. No boy who had brought himself

up properly could fail to appreciate one of those decorative bottles of liqueurs that are so reverently staged in

Morel's windowand it wouldn't in the least matter if one did get duplicates. And there would always be

the supreme moment of dreadful uncertainty whether it was creme de menthe or Chartreuselike the

expectant thrill on seeing your partner's hand turned up at bridge. People may say what they like about the

decay of Christianity; the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die.

And then, of course, there are liqueur glasses, and crystallized fruits, and tapestry curtains, and heaps of other

necessaries of life that make really sensible presentsnot to speak of luxuries, such as having one's bills

paid, or getting something quite sweet in the way of jewellery. Unlike the alleged Good Woman of the Bible,

I'm not above rubies. When found, by the way, she must have been rather a problem at Christmastime;

nothing short of a blank cheque would have fitted the situation. Perhaps it's as well that she's died out.

The great charm about me (concluded Reginald) is that I am so easily pleased. But I draw the line at a

``One goes to the Academy in selfdefence,'' said Reginald. ``It is the one topic one has in common with the

``It is almost a religious observance with them,'' said the Other. ``A kind of artistic Mecca, and when the good

``To the Chantrey Bequest. The mystery is what they find to talk about in the country.''

``There are two subjects of conversation in the country: Servants, and Can fowls be made to pay? The first, I

``The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one can always look at them if one is bored with one's

``Even that doesn't always save one. There is the inevitable female whom you met once in Devonshire, or the

Matoppo Hills, or somewhere, who charges up to you with the remark that it's funny how one always meets

``I suffered in that way just now,'' said Reginald plaintively, ``from a woman whose word I had to take that

``I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.''

``Not there and then. She murmured something about being `so clever.' Fancy coming to the Academy to be

``To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.''

``Which reminds me that I can't remember whether I accepted an invitation from you to dine at Kettner's

``On the other hand, I can remember with startling distinctness not having asked you to.''

``So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we'll consider that settled. What were you talking about?

Oh, pictures. Personally, I rather like them; they are so refreshingly real and probable, they take one away

``That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the

faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. I hate posterityit's so fond of having the last

``If you're going to be rude,'' said Reginald, ``I shall dine with you tomorrow night as well. The chief vice of

the Academy,'' he continued, ``is its nomenclature. Why, for instance, should an obvious troutstream with a

palpable rabbit sitting in the foreground be called `an evening dream of unbeclouded peace,' or something of

``You think,'' said the Other, ``that a name should economize description rather than stimulate imagination?''

``Properly chosen, it should do both. There is my lady kitten at home, for instance; I've called it Derry.''

``Suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted sieges and religious animosities. of course, I don't know

``Oh, you're silly. It's a sweet name, and it answers to itwhen it wants to. Then, if there are any unseemly

``You might almost charge for the advertisement. But as applied to pictures, don't you think your system

``Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the

angels over the prodigals return. Another darling weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries

must `arrive' in a hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a Balkan trouble or a street improvement,

and by the time they have painted a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their work begins to be

``Some one who Must Not be Contradicted said that a man must be a success by the time he's thirty, or

``After all,'' said the Duchess vaguely, ``there are certain things you can't get away from. Right and wrong,

``So, for the matter of that,'' replied Reginald, ``has the Russian Empire. The trouble is that the limits are not

Reginald and the Duchess regarded each other with mutual distrust, tempered by a scientific interest.

Reginald considered that the Duchess had much to learn; in particular, not to hurry out of the Carlton as

though afraid of losing one's last 'bus. A woman, he said, who is careless of disappearances is capable of

leaving town before Goodwood, and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable disease.

The Duchess thought that Reginald did not exceed the ethical standard which circumstances demanded.

``Of course,'' she resumed combatively, ``it's the prevailing fashion to believe in perpetual change and

mutability, and all that sort of thing, and to say we are all merely an improved form of primeval apeof

``I think it decidedly premature; in most people I know the process is far from complete.''

``Oh, by no means. The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience:

you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other.''

The Duchess suppressed a sniff. She was one of those people who regard the Church of England with

patronizing affection, as if it were something that had grown up in their kitchen garden.

``But there are other things,'' she continued, ``which I suppose are to a certain extent sacred even to you.

Patriotism, for instance, and Empire, and Imperial responsibility, and bloodisthickerthanwater, and all

Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, while the Lord of Rimini temporarily monopolized

``That is the worst of a tragedy,'' he observed, ``one can't always hear oneself talk. Of course I accept the

Imperial idea and the responsibility. After all, I would just as soon think in Continents as anywhere else. And

some day, when the season is over and we have the time, you shall explain to me the exact

bloodbrotherhood and all that sort of thing that exists between a French Canadian and a mild Hindoo and a

``Oh, well, `dominion over palm and pine,' you know,'' quoted the Duchess hopefully; ``of course we mustn't

``Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem. A very pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a

``Really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is conscious of spreading the benefits of civilization all

over the world! PhilanthropyI suppose you will say that is a comfortable delusion; and yet even you must

admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist, however distant or difficult of access, we

instantly organize relief on the most generous scale, and distribute it, if need be, to the uttermost ends of the

The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She had made the same observation at a

``I wonder,'' said Reginald, ``if you have ever walked down the Embankment on a winter night?''

``I didn't; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, practised in a world where everything is based on

competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. The young ravens cry for food.''

``Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading Nietzsche till you haven't got any sense of moral

proportion left. May I ask if you are governed by any laws of conduct whatever?''

``There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude

to any inoffensive, greybearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smokingrooms on the

``The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and

``Now we are only nice. One must specialize in these days. Which reminds me of the man I read of in some

sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and

honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also.''

``I'm writing a poem on Peace,'' said Reginald, emerging from a sweeping operation through a tin of mixed

``Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, I've got a new fountain pen. I don't pretend to

have gone on any very original lines; in writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else is saying,

``The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang around and look foolish. Then I've brought in

``I can't help that, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts of unexpected yearnings:

Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on the bare and sunscorched veldt, but

Reginald considered. ``It might do, but I've got a lot about angels later on. You must have angels in a Peace

``Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and

``I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being agreed with. And I'm so worried about the

Reginald stared dismally at the biscuittin, which now presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels.

``I believe,`` he murmured , ''if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should

``Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was dressingit's dreadfully bad

for one to think whilst one's dressingand all lunchtime, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like those

unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable notoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars

in the most crowded thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely

``And quite a decorative bit of moral admonitionwhen you've worried the meaning out

'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine

shares.' Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There's lots more about the blessings of

``Never,'' wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, ``be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest

None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used

It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said

disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather

Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook the reformation of Reginald. Her

name was Amabel; it was the vicar's one extravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually

gifted; she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee. If you abstain

from tennis and read Maeterlinck in a small country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she had

been twice to Fe'camp to pick up a good French accent from the Americans staying there; consequently she

had a knowledge of the world which might be considered useful in dealings with a worldling.

Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook the reformation of its wayward member.

Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed

in the healthy influence of natural surroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different.

And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an

empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a

Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, ``which simply sat and looked beautiful, and defied competition.''

``Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a world of trouble I take in trying to rival the lilies

``You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life is infinitely preferable to good looks.''

``You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty is only sin deep.''

Amabel began to realize that the battle is not always to the strongminded. With the immemorial resource of

her sex, she abandoned the frontal attack and laid stress on her unassisted labours in parish work, her mental

loneliness, her discouragementsand at the right moment she produced strawberries and cream. Reginald

was obviously affected by the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might begin the strenuous

life by helping her to supervise the annual outing of the bucolic infants who composed the local choir, his

Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as Amabel was concerned. The most virtuous women are

not proof against damp grass, and Amabel kept her bed with a cold. Reginald called it a dispensation; it had

been the dream of his life to stagemanage a choir outing. With strategic insight, he led his shy,

bulletheaded charges to the nearest woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself on

their discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate future, which, he decreed, was to embrace a

Bacchanalian procession through the village. Forethought had provided the occasion with a supply of tin

whistles, but the introduction of a hegoat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliant afterthought. Properly,

Reginald explained, there should have been an outfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had spotted

handkerchiefs were allowed to wear them, which they did with thankfulness. Reginald recognized the

impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teaching his shivering neophytes a chant in honour of Bacchus, so

he started them off with a more familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. After all, he said, it is the

spirit of the thing that counts. Following the etiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he remained

discreetly in the background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and the goat, wound its way

lugubriously towards the village. The singing had died down long before the main street was reached, but the

miserable wailing of pipes brought the inhabitants to their doors. Reginald said he had seen something like it

in pictures; the villagers had seen nothing like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely.

I have (said Reginald) an aunt who worries. She's not really an aunta sort of amateur one, and they aren't

really worries. She is a social success, and has no domestic tragedies worth speaking of, so she adopts any

decorative sorrows that are going, myself included. In that way she's the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to

those sweet, uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and worn blinkers ever since. Of

course, one just loves them for it, but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck

that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Ducks have no repose.

Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is

always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up

at Lent to annoy her husband's people, who are considerably Lower than the angels, so to speak: with all

these natural advantagesshe says her particular tint of bronze is a natural advantage, and there can be no

two opinions as to the advantageof course she has to send out for her afflictions, like those restaurants

where they haven't got a licence. The system has this advantage, that you can fit your unhappinesses in with

your other engagements, whereas real worries have a way of arriving at mealtimes, and when you're

dressing, or other solemn moments. I knew a canary once that had been trying for months and years to hatch

out a family, and every one looked upon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of Delagoa Bay, which

would be an annual loss to the Press agencies if it ever came to pass; and one day the bird really did bring it

off, in the middle of family prayers. I say the middle, but it was also the end: you can't go on being thankful

for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth very new canaries expect to be fed on.

At present she's rather in a Balkan state of mind about the treatment of the Jews in Roumania. Personally, I

think the Jews have estimable qualities; they're so kind to their poorand to our rich. I daresay in

Roumania the cost of living beyond one's income isn't so great. Over here the trouble is that so many people

who have money to throw about seem to have such vague ideas where to throw it. That fund, for instance, to

relieve the victims of sudden disasterswhat is a sudden disaster? There's Marion Mulciber, who would

think she could play bridge, just as she would think she could ride down a hill on a bicycle; on that occasion

she went to a hospital, now shes gone into a Sisterhoodlost all she had, you know, and gave the rest to

Heaven. Still, you can't call it a sudden calamity; that occurred when poor dear Marion was born. The doctors

said at the time that she couldn't live more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to see if she

And then there's the Education Questionnot that I can see that there's anything to worry about in that

direction. To my mind, education is an absurdly overrated affair. At least, one never took it very seriously at

school, where everything was done to bring it prominently under one's notice. Anything that is worth

knowing one practically teaches oneself, and the rest obtrudes itself sooner or later. The reason one's elders

know so comparatively little is because they have to unlearn so much that they acquired by way of education

before we were born. Of course I'm a believer in Naturestudy; as I said to Lady Beauwhistle, if you want a

lesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the studied unconcern of a Persian cat entering a crowded salon,

and then go and practise it for a fortnight. The Beauwhistles weren't born in the Purple, you know, but they're

getting there on the instalment systemso much down, and the rest when you feel like it. They have kind

hearts, and they never forget birthdays. I forget what he was, something in the City, where the patriotism

comes from; and sheoh, well, her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English

accent. So publicspirited of her. I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately

anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. Not that it really matters nowadays, as I told her: I know some

The drawback is, one never really knows one's hosts and hostesses. One gets to know their foxterriers and

their chrysanthemums, and whether the story about the gocart can be turned loose in the drawingroom, or

must be told privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking public opinion; but one's host and

There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite

steady. Should never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a

liontamer's widow and set up as a golfinstructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; dreadfully immoral of

course, because he was only an indifferent player, but still, it showed imagination. His wife was really to be

pitied, because he had been the only person in the house who understood how to manage the cooks temper,

and now she has to put ``D.V.'' on her dinner invitations. Still, that's better than a domestic scandal; a woman

I suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they seldom have more than a superficial acquaintance

with their guests, and so often just when they do get to know you a bit better, they leave off knowing you

altogether. There was rather a breath of winter in the air when I left those Dorsetshire people. You see, they

had asked me down to shoot, and I'm not particularly immense at that sort of thing. There's such a deadly

sameness about partridges; when you've missed one, you've missed the lotat least, that's been my

experience. And they tried to rag me in the smokingroom about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a

sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it. So I got

up the next morning at early dawnI know it was dawn, because there were larknoises in the sky, and the

grass looked as if it had been left out all nightand hunted up the most conspicuous thing in the bird line

that I could find, and measured the distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all I knew. They said

afterwards that it was a tame bird; that's simply silly, because it was awfully wild at the first few shots.

Afterwards it quieted down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to the landscape I got a

gardenerboy to drag it into the hall, where everybody must see it on their way to the breakfastroom. I

breakfasted upstairs myself. I gathered afterwards that the meal was tinged with a very unchristian spirit. I

suppose it's unlucky to bring peacock's feathers into a house; anyway, there was a bluepencilly look in my

Some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto pavonicide (is there such a word?), as long as one

is nicelooking and sufficiently unusual to counterbalance some of the others; and there are othersthe

girl, for instance, who reads Meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural punctuality in a frock that's made

at home and repented at leisure. She eventually finds her way to India and gets married, and comes home to

admire the Royal Academy, and to imagine that an indifferent prawn curry is for ever an effective substitute

for all that we have been taught to believe is luncheon. It's then that she is really dangerous; but at her worst

she is never quite so bad as the woman who fires Exchange and Mart questions at you without the least

provocation. Imagine the other day, just when I was doing my best to understand half the things I was saying,

being asked by one of those seekers after country home truths how many fowls she could keep in a run ten

feet by six, or whatever it was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she kept the door shut, and the idea didn't

seem to have struck her before; at least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner.

Of course, as I say, one never really knows one's ground, and one may make mistakes occasionally. But then

one's mistakes sometimes turn out assets in the longrun: if we had never bungled away our American

colonies we might never have had the boy from the States to teach us how to wear our hair and cut our

clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, I suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in

China centuries before we thought of him. England must wake up, as the Duke of Devonshire said the other

day, wasn't it? Oh, well, it was some one else. Not that I ever indulge in despair about the Future; there

always have been men who have gone about despairing of the Future, and when the Future arrives it says

nice, superior things about their having acted according to their lights. It is dreadful to think that other

``A most variable climate,'' said the Duchess; ``and how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold

``Some one has observed that Providence is always on the side of the big dividends,'' remarked Reginald. The

Duchess ate an anchovy in a shocked manner; she was sufficiently oldfashioned to dislike irreverence

Reginald had left the selection of a feedingground to her womanly intuition, but he chose the wine himself,

knowing that womanly intuition stops short at claret. A woman will cheerfully choose husbands for her less

attractive friends, or take sides in a political controversy without the least knowledge of the issues

``Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me,'' said Reginald: ``they remind me of one's childhood

that one goes through, wondering what the next course is going to be likeand during the rest of the menu

one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oevres. Don't you love watching the different ways people have

of entering a restaurant? There is the woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were held

together by a onepin despotism which might abdicate its functions at any moment; it's really a relief to see

her reach her chair in safety. Then there are the people who troop in with anunpleasantdutytoperform

air, as if they were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that type of Briton very much in hotels

abroad. And nowadays there are always the Johannesbourgeois, who bring a CapetoCairo atmosphere

``Talking about hotels abroad,'' said the Duchess, ``I am preparing notes for a lecture at the Club on the

educational effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the moral side of the question. I was talking to

Lady Beauwhistle's aunt the other dayshe's just come back from Paris, you know. Such a sweet

``And so silly. In these days of the overeducation of women she's quite refreshing. They say some people

went through the siege of Paris without knowing that France and Germany were at war; but the Beauwhistle

aunt is credited with having passed the whole winter in Paris under the impression that the Humberts were a

kind of bicycle.... Isn't there a bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have

known on earth in another world? How frightfully embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had

last known at Prince's! I'm sure in my nervousness I should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they

would be quite as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were served up at a cannibal feast I should be

dreadfully annoyed if any one found fault with me for not being tender enough, or having been kept too

``My idea about the lecture,'' resumed the Duchess hurriedly, ``is to inquire whether promiscuous Continental

travel doesn't tend to weaken the moral fibre of the social conscience. There are people one knows, quite nice

people when they are in England, who are so different when they are anywhere the other side of the

``The people with what I call Tauchnitz morals,'' observed Reginald. ``On the whole, I think they get the best

of two very desirable worlds. And, after all, they charge so much for excess luggage on some of those foreign

lines that it's really an economy to leave one's reputation behind one occasionally.''

``A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at Monaco or any of those places as at Exeter, let us

``I've known you longer than your godparents had when they took the liberty of calling you that name.

Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many

blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. Tell me, who is the woman with

the old lace at the table on our left? Oh, that doesn't matter; it's quite the thing nowadays to stare at people as

``Oh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen ocean, I was going to say. He explores icefloes and studies the

movements of herrings, and has written a most interesting book on the homelife of the Esquimaux; but

``A husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream would be rather a tiedup asset.''

``His wife is exceedingly sensible about it. She collects postagestamps. Such a resource. Those people with

her are the Whimples, very old acquaintances of mine; they're always having trouble, poor things.'

``Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any moment; it's like a grousemoor or the

``Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they wanted him to be a linguist, and spent no end of

money on having him taught to speakoh, dozens of languages!and then he became a Trappist monk.

And the youngest, who was intended for the American marriage market, has developed political tendencies,

and writes pamphlets about the housing of the poor. Of course it's a most important question, and I devote a

good deal of time to it myself in the mornings; but, as Laura Whimple says, it's as well to have an

establishment of one's own before agitating about other people's. She feels it very keenly, but she always

``There are different ways of taking disappointment. There was a girl I knew who nursed a wealthy uncle

through a long illness, borne by her with Christian fortitude, and then he died and left his money to a

swinefever hospital. She found she'd about cleared stock in fortitude by that time, and now she gives

``Life is full of its disappointments,'' observed the Duchess, ``and I suppose the art of being happy is to

disguise them as illusions. But that, my dear Reginald, becomes more difficult as one grows older.''

``I think it's more generally practised than you imagine. The young have aspirations that never come to pass,

the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middleaged who are really conscious of

their limitationsthat is why one should be so patient with them. But one never is.''

``After all,'' said the Duchess, ``the disillusions of life may depend on our way of assessing it. In the minds of

those who come after us we may be remembered for qualities and successes which we quite left out of the

``It's not always safe to depend on the commemorative tendencies of those who come after us. There may

have been disillusionments in the lives of the mediaeval saints, but they would scarcely have been better

pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses

and the cheaper clarets. And now, if you can tear yourself away from the salted almonds, we'll go and have

There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. Not all at once, of course, but the habit grew

upon her gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree. She had no childrenotherwise it might have

been different. It began with little things, for no particular reason except that her life was a rather empty one,

and it is so easy to slip into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. And then it became difficult to draw

the line at more important things, until at last she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was

fortytwo and five monthsby that time, you see, she was veracious even to months. It may have been

pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the

operatickets which she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives,

which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a

The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from overindulgence in the practice, but she said she was

wedded to the truth; whereupon it was remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public.

(No really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she wishes to burst upon him as a

revelation at dinner. He must have time to forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her friends

began to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible with a large visitinglist. For

instance, she told Miriam Klopstock exactly how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked

for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for peace in our time, and it was not

It was unfortunate, every one agreed, that she had no family; with a child or two in the house, there is an

unconscious check upon too free an indulgence in the truth. Children are given us to discourage our better

emotions. That is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as artificial as life; even in an Ibsen drama

one must reveal to the audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants.

Fate may have ordained the truthtelling from the commencement and should justly bear some of the blame;

but in having no children the Woman was guilty, at least, of contributory negligence.

Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been merely an idle propensity; and one

day she knew. Every woman tells ninety per cent of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent is the

irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no selfrespecting client trespasses. Madame Draga's

establishment was a meetingground for naked truths and overdressed fictions, and it was here, the Woman

felt, that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of past days. Madame herself was in an

inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a War

``If I take it in here, andMiss Howard, one moment, if you pleaseand there, and round like

The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort to simply acquiesce in Madame's views. But

habit had become too strong. ``I'm afraid,'' she faltered, ``it's just the least little bit in the world too''

And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and eternities of her thraldom to fact. Madame was not best

pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found

And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen all along that it must; it was one of those

paltry little truths with which she harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday morning, in a few

illchosen words, she told the cook that she drank. She remembered the scene afterwards as vividly as though

it had been painted in her mind by Abbey. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.

Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it

``One of these days,'' he said, ``I shall write a really great drama. No one will understand the drift of it, but

every one wiII go back to their homes with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with their lives and

``But how about those that have oak panelling all over the house?'' said the Other.

``They can always put down new staircarpets,'' pursued Reginald, ``and, anyhow, I'm not responsible for the

audience having a happy ending. The play would be quite sufficient strain on one's energies. I should get a

bishop to say it was immoral and beautifulno dramatist has thought of that before, and every one would

come to condemn the bishop, and they would stay on out of sheer nervousness. After all, it requires a great

deal of moral courage to leave in a marked manner in the middle of the second act, when your carriage isn't

ordered till twelve. And it would commence with wolves worrying something on a lonely wasteyou

wouldn't see them, of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching, and I should arrange to have

a wolfy fragrance suggested across the footlights. It would look so well on the programmes, `Wolves in the

first act, by Jamrach.' And old Lady Whortleberry, who never misses a first night, would scream. She's

always been nervous since she lost her first husband. He died quite abruptly while watching a county cricket

match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it was supposed that the excitement killed

him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a shock; it was the first husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always

screams if anything thrilling happens too soon after dinner. And after the audience had heard the

``The plot,'' said Reginald, ``would be one of those little everyday tragedies that one sees going on all round

one. In my mind's eye there is the case of the MudgeJervises, which in an unpretentious way has quite an

Enoch Arden intensity underlying it. They'd only been married some eighteen months or so, and

circumstances had prevented their seeing much of each other. With him there was always a foursome or

something that had to be played and replayed in different parts of the country, and she went in for slumming

quite as seriously as if it was a sport. With her, I suppose, it was. She belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear

Souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. No one has ever really reformed

a washerwoman, and that is why the competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by fifties with a little

tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different; wages are too high. This particular

laundress, who came from Bermondsey or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they

thought at last that she might be safely put in the window as a specimen of successful work. So they had her

paraded at a drawingroom ``At Home'' at Agatha Camelford's; it was sheer bad luck that some liqueur

chocolates had been turned loose by mistake among the refreshmentsreally liqueur chocolates, with very

little chocolate. And of course the old soul found them out, and cornered the entire stock. It was like finding a

whelkstall in a desert, as she afterwards partially expressed herself. When the liqueurs began to take effect,

she started to give them imitations of farmyard animals as they know them in Bermondsey. She began with a

dancing bear, and you know Agatha doesn't approve of dancing, except at Buckingham Palace under proper

supervision. And then she got up on the piano and gave them an organ monkey; I gather she went in for

realism rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of the subject. Finally, she fell into the piano and said she was

a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu performance I believe she was very wordperfect; no one had heard

anything like it, except Baroness Boobelstein who has attended sittings of the Austrian Reichsrath. Agatha is

``Oh, the MudgeJervises. Well, they were getting along quite happily, and their married life was one

continuous exchange of picturepostcards; and then one day they were thrown together on some neutral

ground where foursomes and washerwomen overlapped, and discovered that they were hopelessly divided on

the Fiscal Question. They have thought it best to separate, and she is to have the custody of the Persian

kittens for nine months in the yearthey go back to him for the winter, when she is abroad. There you have

the material for a tragedy drawn straight from lifeand the piece could be called `The Price They Paid for

Empire.' And of course one would have to work in studies of the struggle of hereditary tendency against

environment and all that sort of thing. The woman's father could have been an Envoy to some of the smaller

German Courts; that's where she'd get her passion for visiting the poor, in spite of the most careful

upbringing. C'est le premier pa qui compte, as the cuckoo said when it swallowed its fosterparent. That, I

``Oh, the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent in the background that would never be satisfactorily

explained. After all, life teems with things that have no earthly reason. And whenever the characters could

think of nothing brilliant to say about marriage or the War Office, they could open a window and listen to the

I'm not going to discuss the Fiscal Question (said Reginald); I wish to be original. At the same time, I think

one suffers more than one realizes from the system of free imports. I should like, for instance, a really

prohibitive duty put upon the partner who declares on a weak red suit and hopes for the best. Even a free

outlet for compressed verbiage doesn't balance matters. And I think there should be a sort of bountyfed

export (is that the right expression?) of the people who impress on you that you ought to take life seriously.

There are only two classes that really can't help taking life seriouslyschoolgirls of thirteen and

Hohenzollerns; they might be exempt. Albanians come under another heading; they take life whenever they

get the opportunity. The one Albanian that I was ever on speaking terms with was rather a decadent example.

He was a Christian and a grocer, and I don't fancy he had ever killed anybody. I didn't like to question him on

the subject that showed my delicacy. Mrs. Nicorax says I have no delicacy; she hasn't forgiven me about

the mice. You see, when I was staying down there, a mouse used to cakewalk about my room half the night,

and none of their silly patent traps seemed to take its fancy as a bijou residence, so I determined to appeal to

the better side of itwhich with mice is the inside. So I called it Percy, and put little delicacies down near

its hole every night, and that kept it quiet while I read Max Nordau's Degeneration and other reproving

literature, and went to sleep. And now she says there is a whole colony of mice in that room.

That isn't where the indelicacy comes in. She went out riding with me, which was entirely her own

suggestion, and as we were coming home through some meadows she made a quite unnecessary attempt to

see if her pony would jump a rather messy sort of brook that was there. It wouldn't. It went with her as far as

the water's edge, and from that point Mrs. Nicorax went on alone. Of course I had to fish her out from the

bank, and my ridingbreeches are not cut with a view to salmonfishingit's rather an art even to ride in

them. Her habitskirt was one of those open questions that need not be adhered to in emergencies, and on this

occasion it remained behind in some waterweeds. She wanted me to fish about for that too, but I felt I had

done enough Pharaoh's daughter business for an October afternoon, and I was beginning to want my tea. So I

bundled her up on to her pony, and gave her a lead towards home as fast as I cared to go. What with the wet

and the unusual responsibility, her abridged costume did not stand the pace particularly well, and she got

quite querulous when I shouted back that I had no pins with meand no string. Some women expect so

much from a fellow. When we got into the drive she wanted to go up the back way to the stables, but the

ponies know they always get sugar at the front door, and I never attempt to hold a pulling pony; as for Mrs.

Nicorax it took her all she knew to keep a firm hand on her seceding garments, which, as her maid remarked

afterwards, were more tout than ensemble. Of course nearly the whole houseparty were out on the lawn

watching the sunsetthe only day this month that it's occurred to the sun to show itself, as Mrs. Nic.

viciously observedand I shall never forget the expression on her husband's face as we pulled up. ``My

darling, this is too much!'' was his first spoken comment; taking into consideration the state of her toilet, it

was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard him say, and I went into the library to be alone and scream. Mrs.

Talking about tariffs, the liftboy, who reads extensively between the landings, says it won't do to tax raw

commodities. What, exactly, is a raw commodity? Mrs. Van Challaby says men are raw commodities till you

marry them; after they've struck Mrs. Van C., I can fancy they pretty soon become a finished article.

Certainly she's had a good deal of experience to support her opinion. She lost one husband in a railway

accident, and mislaid another in the Divorce Court, and the current one has just got himself squeezed in a

Beef Trust. ``What was he doing in a Beef Trust, anyway?'' she asked tearfully, and I suggested that perhaps

he had an unhappy home. I only said it for the sake of making conversation; which it did. Mrs. Van Challaby

said things about me which in her calmer moments she would have hesitated to spell. It's a pity people can't

discuss fiscal matters without getting wild. However, she wrote next day to ask if I could get her a Yorkshire

terrier of the size and shade that's being worn now, and that's as near as a woman can be expected to get to

owning herself in the wrong. And she will tie a salmonpink bow to its collar, and call it ``Reggie,'' and take

it with her everywherelike poor Miriam Klopstock, who would take her Chow with her to the bathroom,

and while she was bathing it was playing at shebears with her garments. Miriam is always late for breakfast,

However, I'm not going any further into the Fiscal Question. Only I should like to be protected from the

They say (said Reginald) that there's nothing sadder than victory except defeat. If you've ever stayed with dull

people during what is alleged to be the festive season, you can probably revise that saying. I shall never

forget putting in a Christmas at the Babwolds'. Mrs. Babwold is some relation of my father'sa sort of

tobelefttillcalledfor cousinand that was considered sufficient reason for my having to accept her

invitation at about the sixth time of asking; though why the sins of the father should be visited by the

childrenyou won't find any notepaper in that drawer; that's where I keep old menus and firstnight

Mrs. Babwold wears a rather solemn personality, and has never been known to smile, even when saying

disagreeable things to her friends or making out the Stores list. She takes her pleasures sadly. A state elephant

at a Durbar gives one a very similar impression. Her husband gardens in all weathers. When a man goes out

in the pouring rain to brush caterpillars off rose trees, I generally imagine his life indoors leaves something to

Of course there were other people there. There was a Major Somebody who had shot things in Lapland, or

somewhere of that sort; I forget what they were, but it wasn't for want of reminding. We had them cold with

every meal almost, and he was continually giving us details of what they measured from tip to tip, as though

he thought we were going to make them warm underthings for the winter. I used to listen to him with a rapt

attention that I thought rather suited me, and then one day I quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi I

had shot in the Lincolnshire fens. The Major turned a beautiful Tyrian scarlet (I remember thinking at the

time that I should like my bathroom hung in that colour), and I think that at that moment he almost found it in

his heart to dislike me. Mrs. Babwold put on a firstaidtotheinjured expression, and asked him why he

didn't publish a book of his sporting reminiscences; it would be so interesting. She didn't remember till

afterwards that he had given her two fat volumes on the subject, with his portrait and autograph as a

It was in the evening that we cast aside the cares and distractions of the day and really lived. Cards were

thought to be too frivolous and empty a way of passing the time, so most of them played what they called a

book game. You went out into the hallto get an inspiration, I supposethen you came in again with a

muffler tied round your neck and looked silly, and the others were supposed to guess that you were Wee

MacGreegor. I held out against the inanity as long as I decently could, but at last, in a lapse of goodnature, I

consented to masquerade as a book, only I warned them that it would take some time to carry out. They

waited for the best part of forty minutes while I went and played wineglass skittles with the pageboy in the

pantry; you play it with a champagne cork, you know, and the one who knocks down the most glasses

without breaking them wins. I won, with four unbroken out of seven; I think William suffered from

overanxiousness. They were rather mad in the drawingroom at my not having come back, and they weren't

a bit pacified when I told them afterwards that I was At the end of the passage.

``I never did like Kipling,'' was Mrs. Babwold's comment, when the situation dawned upon her. ``I couldn't

On Christmas evening we were supposed to be specially festive in the Old English fashion. The hall was

horribly draughty, but it seemed to be the proper place to revel in, and it was decorated with Japanese fans

and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect. A young lady with a confidential voice

favoured us with a long recitation about a little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and then

the Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. I privately wished that the

bears would win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards.

Before we had time to recover our spirits, we were indulged with some thoughtreading by a young man

whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and an indifferent tailorthe sort of young man who talks

unflaggingly through the thickest soup, and smooths his hair dubiously as though he thought it might hit

back. The thoughtreading was rather a success; he announced that the hostess was thinking about poetry,

and she admitted that her mind was dwelling on one of Austin's odes. Which was near enough. I fancy she

had been really wondering whether a scragend of mutton and some cold plumpudding would do for the

kitchen dinner next day. As a crowning dissipation, they all sat down to play progressive halma, with

milkchocolate for prizes. I've been carefully brought up, and I don't like to play games of skill for

milkchocolate, so I invented a headache and retired from the scene. I had been preceded a few minutes

earlier by Miss LangshanSmith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in

the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in communication with most of the European

Governments before breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request that she might be

called particularly early on the morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up

everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye

she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military

funeral. A few minutes later I violently exploded an airfilled paper bag on the landing, and gave a stage

moan that could have been heard in the cellars. Then I pursued my original intention and went to bed. The

noise those people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively indecorous; she resisted

gallantly, but I believe they searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been a

I hate travelling on Boxing Day, but one must occasionally do things that one dislikes.

The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in the bathroom and making bad resolutions for

the New Year, it occurred to qme that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand, is that

you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score, and then

I got to work on a Hymn to the New Year, which struck me as having possibilities. It suggested extremely

unusual things to absolutely unlikely people, which I believe is the art of firstclass catering in any

It was quite improbable that any one had, you know, and that's where it stimulated the imagination and took

people out of their narrow, humdrum selves. No one has ever called me narrow or humdrum, but even I felt

worked up now and then at the thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it. It simply wasn't nice.

But the editors were unanimous in leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before and done worse,

It was just on the top of that discouragement that the Duchess wanted me to write something in her

albumsomething Persian, you know, and just a little bit decadentand I thought a quatrain on an

The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air of forgiveness and chose juge'e to the whole

thing; also she said it wasn't Persian enough, as though I were trying to sell her a kitten whose mother had

married for love rather than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new version read:

I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to satisfy a jackal, and to me there was something

infinitely pathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sort of St. Luke's summer of commercial

usefulness. But the Duchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; she's the president of a Women's

Something or other, and she said it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable methods. I never can

remember which Party Irene discourages with her support, but I shan't forget an occasion when I was staying

at her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at the house of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things

for a woman who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent medicine. I thought it much cleverer to

give the grapes to the former and the political literature to the sick woman, and the Duchess was quite

absurdly annoyed about it afterwards. It seems the leaflet was addressed ``To those about to wobble''l

wasn't responsible for the silly title of the thingand the woman never recovered; anyway, the voter was

completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and I think that should have balanced matters. The Duchess

called it bribery, and said it might have compromised the candidate she was supporting; he was expected to

subscribe to church funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs and regattas, and bazaars and

beanfeasts and bellringers, and poultry shows and ploughing matches, and readingrooms and choir outings,

and shooting trophies and testimonials, and anything of that sort; but bribery would not have been tolerated.

I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering than for poetry, and I was really getting extended over

this quatrain business. The egg began to be unmanageable, and the Duchess suggested something with a

French literary ring about it. I hunted back in my mind for the most familiar French classic that I could take

liberties with, and after a little exercise of memory I turned out the following:

Even that didn't altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy the geography of it puzzled her. She probably thought

Kaikobad was an unfashionable German spa, where you'd meet matrimonial bargainhunters and emergency

Servian kings. My temper was beginning to slip its moorings by that time. I look rather nice when I lose my

temper. (I hoped you would say I lose it very often. I mustn't monopolize the conversation.)

``Of course, if you want something really Persian and passionate, with red wine and bulbuls in it,'' I went on

``Not for worlds. Nothing with red wine or passion in it. Dear Agatha gave me the album, and she would be

I said I didn't believe Agatha had a quick, and we got quite heated in arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess

declared I shouldn't write anything nasty in her book, and I said I shouldn't write anything in her nasty book,

so there wasn't a very wide point of difference between us. For the rest of the afternoon I pretended to be

sulking, but I was really working back to that quatrain, like a foxterrier that's buried a deferred lunch in a

private flowerbed. When I got an opportunity I hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had the front page all

to itself, and, copying her prim handwriting as well as I could, I inserted above it the following Thibetan

That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even in the comparative seclusion of Thibet is

unthinkable. I very much doubt if she'd do it with her own husband in the privacy of the Simplon tunnel. But

By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you on the 14th, I said I was dining with the

Reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the buttonhole of his latest lounge coat, and surveyed the

result with approval. ``I am just in the mood,'' he observed, ``to have my portrait painted by some one with an

unmistakable future. So comforting to go down to posterity as `Youth with a Pink Carnation' in

``But never act on the suggestion. I don't believe the two ever really go together. People talk vaguely about

the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty

minutes. The watched pot never boils over. I knew a boy once who really was innocent; his parents were in

Society, but they never gave him a moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in company prospectuses,

and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even in a system for winning at roulette.

He never quite lost his faith in it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. When

last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury weren't. All the same, I really am innocent just

now of something every one accuses me of having done, and so far as I can see, their accusations will remain

``I love people who do unexpected things. Didn't you always adore the man who slew a lion in a pit on a

snowy day? But about this unfortunate innocence. Well, quite long ago, when I'd been quarrelling with more

people than usual, you among the numberit must have been in November, I never quarrel with you too

near ChristmasI had an idea that I'd like to write a book. It was to be a book of personal reminiscences,

``Exactly what the Duchess said when I mentioned it to her. I was provoking and said nothing, and the next

thing, of course, was that every one heard that I'd written the book and got it in the press. After that, I might

have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got. People attacked me about it in the most

unexpected places, and implored or commanded me to leave out things that I'd forgotten had ever happened. I

sat behind Miriam Klopstock one night in the dresscircle at His Majestys, and she began at once about the

incident of the Chow dog in the bathroom, which she insisted must be struck out. We had to argue it in a

disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to listen to the play, and Miriam takes nine in voices.

They had to stop her playing in the `Macaws' Hockey Club because you could hear what she thought when

her shins got mixed up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a still day. They are called the Macaws because of

their blueandyellow costumes, but I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam's language. I

agreed to make one alteration, as I pretended I had got it a Spitz instead of a Chow, but beyond that I was

firm. She megaphoned back two minutes later, `You promised you would never mention it; don't you ever

keep a promise?' When people had stopped glaring in our direction, I replied that I'd as soon think of keeping

white mice. I saw her tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, and then she leaned back

and snorted, `You're not the boy I took you for,' as though she were an eagle arriving at Olympus with the

wrong Ganymede. That was her last audible remark, but she went on tearing up her programme and scattering

the pieces around her, till one of her neighbours asked with immense dignity whether she should send for a

``Then there is Mrs.oh, I never can remember her name; she lives in a street that the cabmen have never

heard of, and is at home on Wednesdays. She frightened me horribly once at a private view by saying

mysteriously, `I oughtn't to be here, you know; this is one of my days.' I thought she meant that she was

subject to periodical outbreaks and was expecting an attack at any moment. So embarrassing if she had

suddenly taken it into her head that she was Cesare Borgia or St. Elizabeth of Hungary. That sort of thing

would make one unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private view. However, she merely meant to say that it

was Wednesday, which at the moment was incontrovertible. Well, she's on quite a different tack to the

Klopstock. She doesn't visit anywhere very extensively, and, of course, she's awfully keen for me to drag in

an incident that occurred at one of the Beauwhistle gardenparties, when she says she accidentally hit the

shins of a Serene Somebody or other with a croquet mallet and that he swore at her in German. As a matter of

fact, he went on discoursing on the GordonBennett affair in French. (I never can remember if it's a new

submarine or a divorce. Of course, how stupid of me!) To be disagreeably exact, I fancy she missed him by

about two inchesoveranxiousness, probablybut she likes to think she hit him. I've felt that way with a

partridge which I always imagine keeps on flying strong, out of false pride, till it's the other side of the hedge.

She said she could tell me everything she was wearing on the occasion. I said I didn't want my book to read

like a laundry list, but she explained that she didn't mean those sort of things.

``And there's the Chilworth boy, who can be charming as long as he's content to be stupid and wear what he's

told to; but he gets the idea now and then that he'd like to be epigrammatic, and the result is like watching a

rook trying to build a nest in a gale. Since he got wind of the book, he's been persecuting me to work in

something of his about the Russians and the Yalu Peril, and is quite sulky because I won't do it.

``Altogether, I think it would be rather a brilliant inspiration if you were to suggest a fortnight in Paris.''