satisfactory.  A malignant Fate, however——­” When I asked him if he was coming he told the man I was taunting him, so I just drove home.  The Willoughbys brought him back in their car quarter of an hour later.  Madge said she’d never laughed so much in her life, but I can’t bear it alone.  Mrs. Mason is at last reconciled to the idea of an electric cooker, and your new curtains look sweet.  Come along.  Love to you all.

DAPHNE.

“Berry’s version should be engaging,” said Jonah.  “Slip along with that porridge.”

“Don’t hustle me.  Gladstone used to masticate every mouthful he took seven million times before swallowing.  That’s why he couldn’t tell a lie.  Or am I thinking of Lincoln?”

The hostility with which my cousins received the historical allusion was so marked that it seemed only prudent to open my brother-in-law’s letter without further delay.

I did so and read the contents aloud.

DEAR BROTHER,

Your constant derision of human suffering has satisfied me that the facts I am about to relate will afford you the utmost gratification.  Natheless I consider that for form’s sake my wife’s brother should know that I am in failing health.  This morning, whilst faring forth, as is my wont (pronounced “wunt"), upon a mission of charity, I was seized with an agony in the neck and Old Bond Street just opposite the drinking-fountain.  Believing it to be appendicitis, I demanded a chirurgeon, but nobody could spell the word.  The slightest movement, however, spelt anguish without a mistake.  My scruff was in the grip of Torment.  Observing that I was helpless, the woman, my wife, summoned a hackney carriage and drove off, taunting and jeering at her spouse.  By this time my screams had attracted the attention of a few passers-by.  Some stood apparently egg-bound, others hurried away, doubtless to procure assistance.  One fool asked me if I was ill.  I told him that I had been dead for some days, and asked him if he knew of a good florist, as I wanted them to send no flowers.  Had it not been for Madge Willoughby, I should have been there now.

Organized bodies of navvies are slowly but surely ruining the streets.  No efforts are made to stop them, and the police seem powerless to interfere.

There is no room in London.  I never remember when there was.  But don’t you come.  The air is the purer for your absence, and your silk hats seem to fit me better than my own.  My love for Jill is only exceeded by my hatred of you and my contempt for Jonah.  I have much more to say, but I have, thank Heaven, something better to do than to communicate with a debauched connection, whose pleasure has ever been my pain, and from whom I have learned more vicious ways than I can remember.  For I am by nature a little child.  Just before and after rain you may still see traces of the halo which I bought at Eastbourne in ’94.  My gorge is rising, so I must write no more.