ght into comparison at their own table with
superior men. Put him, for instance, beside Mr. Sikleigh Snoop, the
sex-poet, and where was he? Nowhere. He couldn't even understand what
Mr. Snoop was saying. And when Mr. Snoop would stand on the hearth-rug
with a cup of tea balanced in his hand, and discuss whether sex was or
was not the dominant note in Botticelli, Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown would be
skulking in a corner in his ill-fitting dress suit. His wife would
often catch with an agonized ear such scraps of talk as, "When I was
first in the coal and wood business," or, "It's a coal that burns
quicker than egg, but it hasn't the heating power of nut," or even in a
low undertone the words, "If you're feeling _dry_ while he's reading--"
And this at a time when everybody in the room ought to have been
listening to Mr. Snoop.

Nor was even this the whole burden of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. There was
another part of it which was perhaps more _real_, though Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown herself never put it into words. In fact, of this part
of her burden she never spoke, even to her bosom friend Miss Snagg; nor
did she talk about it to the ladies of the Dante Club, nor did she make
speeches on it to the members of the Women's Afternoon Art Society, nor
to the Monday Bridge Club.

But the members of the Bridge Club and the Art Society and the Dante
Club all talked about it among themselves.

Stated very simply, it was this: Mr. Rasselyer-Brown drank. It was not
meant that he was a drunkard or that he drank too much, or anything of
that sort. He drank. That was all.

There was no excess about it. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, of course, began the
day with an eye-opener--and after all, what alert man does not wish his
eyes well open in the morning? He followed it usually just before
breakfast with a bracer--and what wiser precaution can a businessman
take than to brace his breakfast? On his way to business he generally
had his motor stopped at the Grand Palaver for a moment, if it was a
raw day, and dropped in and took something to keep out the damp. If it
was a cold day he took something to keep out the cold, and if it was
one of those clear, sunny days that are so dangerous to the system he
took whatever the bartender (a recognized health expert) suggested to
tone the system up. After which he could sit down in his office and
transact more business, and bigger business, in coal, charcoal, wood,
pulp, pulpwood, and woodpulp, in two hours than any ot