THE JUMBLE SALE.

Aunt Angela coughed. "By the way, Etta was here this afternoon."

Edward's eye met mine. The result of Etta's last call was that Edward spent
a vivid afternoon got up as Father Christmas in a red dressing-gown and
cotton-wool whiskers, which caught fire and singed his home-grown articles,
small boys at the same time pinching his legs to see if he was real, while
I put in some sultry hours under a hearthrug playing the benevolent
polar-bear to a crowd of small girls who hunted me with fire-irons.

"What is it this time?" I asked.

"A jumble sale," said Aunt Angela.

"What's that?"

"A scheme by which the bucolic English exchange garbage," Edward explained.

"Oh, well, that has nothing to do with us, thank goodness."

He returned to his book, a romance entitled _Gertie, or Should She Have
Done It?_ Edward, I should explain, is a philosopher by trade, but he
beguiles his hours of ease with works of fiction borrowed from the cook.

Aunt Angela was of a different opinion. "Oh, yes, it has: both of you are
gradually filling the house up with accumulated rubbish. If you don't
surrender most of it for Etta's sale there'll be a raid."

My eye met Edward's. We walked out into the hall.