Though, of course, he can never forgive her the thrashing that she was
the indirect means of getting for him.

* * * * *

What Biel wants to know is, 'Why didn't I press home the charge against
the Bronckhorst brute, and have him run in?'

What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is, 'How _did_ my husband bring such
a lovely, lovely Waler from your station? I know _all_ his money
affairs; and I'm _certain_ he didn't _buy_ it.'

What I want to know is, 'How do women like Mrs. Bronckhorst come to
marry men like Bronckhorst?'

And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the three.




IRREMEDIABLE

By Ella D'Arcy

(_Monochromes_, London: John Lane, 1893)


A young man strolled along a country road one August evening after a
long delicious day--a day of that blessed idleness the man of leisure
never knows: one must be a bank clerk forty-nine weeks out of the