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‘He’, of course, had debts, and he was working to pay them off. And if he had been a fairy prince who could call the ants to help him, he would not have been more wonderful than in securing this secretary and her family. They took hardly any wages. And they seemed to perform the miracle of loaves and fishes daily.

‘She’, of course, was the wife who loved her husband, but helped him into debt, and she still was an expensive item. Yet when she appeared at her ‘home’, the secretarial family received her with most elaborate attentions and deference. The knight returning from the Crusades didn’t create a greater stir. She felt like Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, a sovereign paying a visit to her faithful subjects. But perhaps there lurked always this hair in her soup! Won’t they be g
lad to be rid of me again!

But they protested No! No! They had been waiting and hoping and praying she would come. They had been pining for her to be there, in charge: the mistress, ‘his’ wife. Ah, ‘his’ wife!

‘His’ wife! His halo was like a bucket over her head.

The cook-mother was ‘of the people’, so it was the upper-maid daughter who came for orders.

“What will you order for to-morrow’s lunch and dinner, Mrs. Gee?”

“Well, what do you usually have?”

“Oh, we want youto say.”

“No, what do you usuallyhave?”

“We don’t have anything fixed. Mother goes out and chooses the best she can find, that is nice and fresh. But she thought you would tell her now what to get.”

“Oh, I don’t know! I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Ask her to go on just the same; I’m quite sure she knows best.”

“Perhaps you’d like to suggest a sweet?”

“No, I don’t care for sweets–and you know Mr. Gee doesn’t. So don’t make one for me.”

Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream; how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy! But they ran the place on simply nothing!

Simply marvellous people! And the way they strewed palm branches under her feet!

But that only made her feel ridiculous.

“Don’t you think the family manage very well?” he asked her tentatively.

“Awfully well! Almost romantically well!” she replied.”But I suppose you’re perfectly happy?”

“I’m perfectly comfortable,” he replied.

“I can see you are,” she replied.”Amazingly so! I never knew such comfort! Are you sure it isn’t bad for you?”

She eyed him stealthily. He looked very well, and extremely handsome, in his histrionic way. He was shockingly well-dressed and valeted. And he had that air of easy aplomb and good humour which is so becoming to a man, and which he only acquires when he is cock of his own little walk, made much of by his own hens.

“No!” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and smiling whimsically round at her.”Do I look as if it were bad for me?”

“No, you don’t,” she replied promptly: thinking, naturally, as a woman is supposed to think nowadays, of his health and comfort, the foundation, apparently, of all happiness.

Then, of course, away she went on the back-wash.

“Perhaps for your work, though, it’s not so good as it is for you,” she said in a rather small voice. She knew he couldn’t bear it if she mocked at his work for one moment. And he knew that rather small voice of hers.

“In what way?” he said, bristles rising.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered indifferently.”Perhaps it’s not good for a man’s work if he is too comfortable.”

“I don’t know about that!” he said, taking a dramatic turn round the library and drawing at his pipe.”Considering I work, actually, by the clock, for twelve hours a day, and for ten hours when it’s a short day, I don’t think you can say I am deteriorating from easy comfort.”