s gardener, and handy-man, and coachman when
required." Lady Hannah's laugh jangled out over the capacious tray,
containing the comprehensive assortment of viands representing what the
invalid was wont to term his "brekker." "But I'm not to be deprived of my
privilege, for all that. Do you suppose you young married creatures are
the only wives who enjoy cosseting their husbands? There! it's out, and I
ought to be ashamed of myself, I suppose, but I'm not. Is that collared
brawn on the sideboard? Bingo has a devouring passion for collared brawn."
She added a goodly slice to the contents of the tray. "I warn you, if you
regard the billing and cooing of a middle-aged couple as indecent," she
went on, "to look the other way a great deal while we're here. For I was
for the first time seriously smitten with my husband when he rode out to
meet me, returning from ignoble captivity in the tents of Brounckers,
eighteen months ago. When I nursed him through enteric in the Hospital at
Frostenberg--I won't disguise it--I fell in love! With a bag of bones, for
he was nothing else: but genuine passion is indifferent to the personal
appearance of the beloved object, though I hadn't suspected it before. The
wound completed my conquest, and since then I'm madly jealous if another
woman looks at him!... I see red--green would be a better colour--because
he prefers to have his valet brush his hair. I don't know that I didn't
reduce the holding capacity of this house by a storey--there's a pun for
you!--so as to engineer my hated rival being left at home in Wilton Place.
Is that lovely murrey-coloured stuff in the cut-glass jar quince
marmalade? No! I won't pamper Bingo, if he is the idol of my soul. And
please don't wait for me. He likes me to take off the tops of his eggs for
him, and he usually eats three...."

Lady Hannah tripped off with her load, and deposited it before the idol,
who was sitting up in a Japanese bed-jacket of wadded pink satin,
left-handedly reading the Herion newspaper that comes out once a week, and
is published at St. Tirlan's, twenty miles away.

"I've made a discovery," she announced. "No, don't look frightened. It's
only that poor Biddy's _belle trouvaille_ has got a heart. She's not the
tinted Canova-nymph, the piece of correct inanity, I honestly believed
her.... She idolised Biddy--small credit, for who could help it? She
submitted to be adored by that poor foolish boy who's dead.... Now she's
her black-avise