of the will is, 'as a sacred charge and with full power.'
Incidentally, as it were, one of his junior partners has been
ordered a long sea voyage, and another has to go somewhere for mud
baths. The junior partners were my idea, and were suggested solely
that their senior might be left more or less free from business
care, but it was impossible that Willie should have selected sound,
robust partners--his tastes do not incline him in the direction of
selfish ease; accordingly he chose two delightful, estimable, frail
gentlemen who needed comfortable incomes in conjunction with light
duties.

I am railing at my husband for all this, but I love him for it just
the same, and it shows why the table is laid for three.

"Salemina," I said, extending my slipper toe to the glowing peat,
which by extraordinary effort had been brought up from the hotel
kitchen, as a bit of local colour, "it is ridiculous that we three
women should be in Ireland together; it's the sort of thing that
happens in a book, and of which we say that it could never occur in
real life. Three persons do not spend successive seasons in
England, Scotland and Ireland unless they are writing an Itinerary
of the British Isles. The situation is possible, certainly, but it
isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We are behaving precisely
like characters in fiction, who, having been popular in the first
volume, are exploited again and again until their popularity wanes.
We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England
was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you
please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love,
we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in
international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our