of people who have second-hand pieces for sale, and who offer to
bring them on approval. The other day, when Willie Beresford and I
came in from Westminster Abbey (where we had been choosing the best
locations for our memorial tablets), we thought Francesca must be
giving a 'small and early'; but it transpired that all the silver-
sellers had called at the same hour, and it took the united strength
of Dawson and Mr. Beresford, together with my diplomacy, to rescue
the poor child from their clutches. She came out alive, but her
safety was purchased at the cost of a George IV. cream-jug, an
Elizabethan sugar-bowl, and a Boadicea tea-caddy, which were, I
doubt not, manufactured in Wardour Street towards the close of the
nineteenth century.

Salemina came in just then, cold and tired. (Tower and National
Gallery the same day. It's so much more work to go to the Tower
nowadays than it used to be!) We had intended to take a sail to
Richmond on a penny steamboat, but it was drizzling, so we had a
cosy fire instead, slipped into our tea-gowns, and ordered tea and
thin bread-and-butter, a basket of strawberries with their frills
on, and a jug of Devonshire cream. Willie Beresford asked if he
might stay; otherwise, he said, he should have to sit at a cold
marble table on the corner of Bond Street and Piccadilly, and take
his tea in bachelor solitude.

"Yes," I said severely, "we will allow you to stay; though, as you
are coming to dinner, I should think you would have to go away some
time, if only in order that you might get ready to come back.
You've been here since breakfast-time."

"I know," he answered calmly, "and my only error in judgment was