so much the better. I don't mind confessing to you that
she has taught me more than any other woman I can think of."

"What kind of knowledge?" demanded Mrs. Eggelby, with the air a jury
might collectively wear when finding a verdict without leaving the box.

"Well, among other things, she's introduced me to at least four different
ways of cooking lobster," said Clovis gratefully. "That, of course,
wouldn't appeal to you; people who abstain from the pleasures of the card-
table never really appreciate the finer possibilities of the
dining-table. I suppose their powers of enlightened enjoyment get
atrophied from disuse."

"An aunt of mine was very ill after eating a lobster," said Mrs. Eggelby.

"I daresay, if we knew more of her history, we should find out that she'd
often been ill before eating the lobster. Aren't you concealing the fact
that she'd had measles and influenza and nervous headache and hysteria,
and other things that aunts do have, long before she ate the lobster?
Aunts that have never known a day's illness are very rare; in fact, I
don't personally know of any. Of course if she ate it as a child of two
weeks old it might have been her first illness--and her last. But if
that was the case I think you should have said so."

"I must be going," said Mrs. Eggelby, in a tone which had been thoroughly
sterilised of even perfunctory regret.

Clovis rose with an air of graceful reluctance.

"I have so enjoyed our little talk about Eric," he said; "I quite look
forward to meeting him some day."

"Good-bye," said Mrs. Eggelby frostily; the supplementary remark which
she made at the back of her throat was--

"I'll take care that you never shall!"

A HOLIDAY TASK

Kenelm Jerton entered the dining-hall of the Golden Galleon Hotel in the
full crush of the luncheon hour. Nearly every seat was occupied, and
small additional tables had been brought in, where floor space permitted,
to accommodate latecomers, with the result that many of the tables were
almost touching each other. Jerton was beckoned by a waiter to the only
vacant table that was discernible, and took his seat with the
uncomfortable and wholly groundless idea that nearly every one in the
room was staring at him. He was a youngish man of ordinary appearance,
quiet of dress and unobtrusive of manner, and he could never wholly rid
himself of the idea that a fierce light of public scrutiny beat on him as
though he had been a notabilit