t you regard it
as essential that I should wash?"

She winked tears away, though her laugh answered him.

"Most certainly I did, and do. One of the reasons that decided me on
marrying you was that you were invariably _propre comme un sou neuf_."

"I thought, on mature reflection," said Bingo, lying down under the
lightened tray with a replete and satisfied air, "that you would prefer a
clean husband to a dirty one. Therefore I engaged a bedroom for Grindlay
at the Herion Arms. That's his knock. Come in!"

The valet presented himself upon the threshold, backing respectfully at
sight of her ladyship, who gave him a gracious good-morning, dissembling
the intense relief experienced at sight of his smug, clean-shaven
countenance.

"Good-morning, Grindlay. I hope the Hotel people made you comfortable. And
now you have arrived to take responsibility off my hands," she announced,
"I'll go and get some breakfast."

"Haven't you ... You're joking!" The tray shot from the bed into
Grindlay's saving clutch as Bingo suddenly assumed the perpendicular. "You
don't mean to say that you've been starving all the time I've been gorging
myself like--like a boa-constrictor?" he demanded furiously. "Why on earth
are women such blessed----"

"--Idiots?" she supplied, turning on the threshold to launch her Parthian
shaft. "Because if they were intellectual, logical beings they would know
better than to lavish devotion upon stupid, selfish, unappreciative,
heartless, dull dolts of men!"

The door slammed behind an injured woman. Grindlay's face was a study in
immobility. Bingo, after a little more meditation, ponderingly rose and
submitted himself to the hands of the attendant. When the Major's toilet
had reached the stage of hair-parting, he roused himself from his
reflections with a sigh.

"Hold on. Put down that comb and go and ask her ladyship to be good enough
to step up here. Tell her that your style of hairdressin' don't suit me. I
want a little more imagination thrown into the thing! Hurry up, will you!"

"O Lord! What a liar I am!" he murmured fervently, addressing his
reflection in the glass. His wife's face appeared over his shoulder,
bright, alert, and pleased. She said, as she adroitly assumed the office
vacated by the discarded Grindlay, who discreetly delayed his re-entrance
on the scene:

"So you can't get on, it appears, without your blessed idiot?"

"Blessed angel, you mean!" said mendacious Bingo, blinking under