complained of neuralgia, and hence this was an evening upon which he
might fairly have expected to see sympathy charmingly attired in the
porch. It is true that the neuralgia had completely gone. "Still," he
said to himself with justifiable sardonic gloom, "how does she know my
neuralgia's gone? She doesn't know."

Having opened the front-door (with the thinnest, neatest latch-key
in the Five Towns), he entered his home and stumbled slightly over a
brush that was lying against the sunk door-mat. He gazed at that brush
with resentment. It was a dilapidated hand-brush. The offensive object
would have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house.
But in the lobby of his house--the house which he had planned a dozen
years earlier, to the special end of minimizing domestic labour, and
which he had always kept up to date with the latest devices--in his
lobby the spectacle of a vile, outworn hand-brush at tea-time amounted
to a scandal. Less than a fortnight previously he had purchased and
presented to his wife a marvellous electric vacuum-cleaner, surpassing
all former vacuum-cleaners. You simply attached this machine by a cord
to the wall, like a dog, and waved it in mysterious passes over the
floor, like a fan, and the house was clean! He was as proud of this
machine as though he had invented it, instead of having merely bought
it; every day he inquired about its feats, expecting enthusiastic
replies as a sort of reward for his own keenness: and be it said that
he had had enthusiastic replies.

And now this obscene hand-brush!

As he carefully removed his hat and his beautiful new Melton overcoat
(which had the colour and the soft smoothness of a damson), he
animadverted upon the astounding negligence of women. There were