sit at ease, which was signalled to my mother. My mother tells me that
she was never so pleased in her life.

One o'clock struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses.
Faint sounds were now audible from the crockery department, and then a
hissing, which passed by degrees into a humming, a long, loud droning
noise. It resembled as nearly as anything the boiling of an urn at a
tea-meeting, and awoke in the breasts of my wife and her army an intense
and unconquerable longing for tea, which was accentuated as four o'clock
was reached. Still no Wenuses. Another hour dragged wearily on, and the
craving for tea had become positively excruciating when five o'clock
rang out.

At that moment, the glass doors of the crockery department were flung
open, and out poured a procession of Wenuses smiling, said my mother,
with the utmost friendliness, dressed as A.B.C. girls, and bearing trays
studded with cups and saucers.

With the most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my
wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be
guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked
friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the
cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every
member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup.
Alas! what could they know of the deadly Tea-Tray of the Wenuses?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, such is the disgraceful neglect of science
in our schools and colleges. And so they drank and were consumed.

Meanwhile my mother, at the head of the south wing of the army, which
had been entirely overlooked by the Wenuses, stood watching the