to swallow for an epicurean. It
might, of course, have been worse, for if Flora had a passion for
collecting, it was a very chaste one, and though what she collected cost
no little money, it always looked as if it had been inherited, and--as
everybody knows--what has been inherited must be put up with, whether it
be a coronet or a cruet-stand.

To collect old things, and write poetry! It was a career; one would not
have one's wife otherwise. She might, for instance, have been like
Stanley's wife, Clara, whose career was wealth and station; or John's
wife, Anne, whose career had been cut short; or even Tod's wife,
Kirsteen, whose career was revolution. No--a wife who had two, and only
two children, and treated them with affectionate surprise, who was never
out of temper, never in a hurry, knew the points of a book or play, could
cut your hair at a pinch; whose hand was dry, figure still good, verse
tolerable, and--above all--who wished for no better fate than Fate had
given her--was a wife not to be sneezed at. And Felix never had. He
had depicted so many sneezing wives and husbands in his books, and knew
the value of a happy marriage better perhaps than any one in England. He
had laid marriage low a dozen times, wrecked it on all sorts of rocks,
and had the greater veneration for his own, which had begun early,
manifested every symptom of ending late, and in the meantime walked down
the years holding hands fast, and by no means forgetting to touch lips.

Hanging up the gray top hat, he went in search of her. He found her in
his dressing-room, surrounded by a number of little bottles, which she
was examining vaguely, and putting one by one into an 'inherited'
waste-paper basket. Having watched her for a little while with a certain
pleasure, he said:

"Yes, my dear?"

Noticing his presence, and continuing to put bottles into the basket, she
answered:

"I thought I must--they're what dear Mother's given us."

There they lay--little bottles filled with white and brown fluids, white
and blue and brown powders; green and brown and yellow ointments; black
lozenges; buff plasters; blue and pink and purple pills. All beautifully
labelled and corked.

And he said in a rather faltering voice:

"Bless her! How she does give her things away! Haven't we used ANY?"

"Not one. And they have to be cleared away before they're stale, for
fear we might take one by mistake."

"Poor Mother!"

"My dear, she's found