o assume a lofty scorn of the
pleasures of the table, but there is great virtue in a really good
feed, especially when low-living and high-thinking have been the order
of the day."

"Coarsely put," said Miss Oman, "but perfectly true."

"Very well. Now, if I leave the management to Mrs. Gummer, she will
probably provide a tepid Irish stew with flakes of congealed fat on it,
and a plastic suet-pudding or something of that kind, and turn the
house upside down in getting it ready. So I thought of having a cold
spread and getting the things from outside. But I don't want it to
look as if I had been making enormous preparations."

"They won't think the things came down from heaven," said Miss Oman.

"No, I suppose they won't. But you know what I mean. Now, where do
you advise me to go for the raw materials of conviviality?"

Miss Oman reflected. "You had better let me do your shopping and
manage the whole business," was her final verdict.

This was precisely what I wanted, and I accepted thankfully, regardless
of the feelings of Mrs. Gummer. I handed her two pounds, and, after
some protests at my extravagance, she bestowed them in her purse; a
process that occupied time, since that receptacle, besides being a sort
of miniature Record Office of frayed and time-stained bills, already
bulged with a lading of draper's samples, ends of tape, a card of linen
buttons, another of hooks and eyes, a lump of beeswax, a rat-eaten
stump of leadpencil, and other trifles that I have forgotten. As she
closed the purse at the imminent risk of wrenching off its fastenings
she looked at me severely and pursed her lips.

"You're a very plausible young man," she remarked.

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"Philandering about museums," she continued, "with handsome young
ladies on the pretense of work. Work, indeed! Oh, I heard her telling
her father about it. She thinks you were perfectly enthralled by the
mummies and dried cats and chunks of stone and all the other trash.
She doesn't know what humbugs men are."

"Really, Miss Oman," I began.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" she snapped. "I can see it all. You can't
impose upon me. I can see you staring into those glass cases, egging
her on to talk and listening open-mouthed and bulging-eyed and sitting
at her feet--now, didn't you?"

"I don't know about sitting at her feet," I said, "though it might
easily have come to that with those infernal slippery floors; but I had