"Miss Louise has been upstairs all the afternoon, ma'am, reading to the
second kitchenmaid, who has the neuralgia. I took up tea to Miss Louise
at a quarter to five o'clock, ma'am."

"Of course, how silly of me. I remember now, I asked her to read the
_Faerie Queene_ to poor Emma, to try to send her to sleep. I always get
some one to read the _Faerie Queene_ to me when I have neuralgia, and it
usually sends me to sleep. Louise doesn't seem to have been successful,
but one can't say she hasn't tried. I expect after the first hour or so
the kitchenmaid would rather have been left alone with her neuralgia, but
of course Louise wouldn't leave off till some one told her to. Anyhow,
you can ring up Mornay's, Robert, and ask whether I left two theatre
tickets there. Except for your silk, Susan, those seem to be the only
things I've forgotten this afternoon. Quite wonderful for me."




TEA


James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled
conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-
four he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and
admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without
singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one
might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak
as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter
aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded