-_Midsummer Night's Dream._

There are four guest-rooms in my house. It is not a large house, and how
there came to be so many rooms to spare for the entertaining of friends
is not a story to be told here. It is only a few years since they were
all full--and not with guests. But they are nearly always full now. And
when I assign each room it is after taking thought.

There are two men's rooms and two for women. The men's rooms have
belonged to men, and therefore they suit other men, who drop into them
and use their belongings, and tell me they were never more comfortable.
The third room is for one after another of the girls and women who
visit me. The fourth room----

"Is anybody really good enough to sleep in this place?"

It was the Skeptic, looking over my shoulder. He had chanced to be
passing, saw me standing in the doorway in an attitude of adoration,
and glanced in over my head. He had continued to look from sheer
astonishment.

"I should expect to have to take off my shoes, and put on a white
cassock over my tennis flannels before I could enter here," he observed.

"You would not be allowed to enter, even in that inappropriate costume,"
I replied. "I keep this room only for the very nicest of my girl
friends. The trouble is----"

"The trouble is--you're full up with our bunch, and have got to put Miss
Althea here, whether she turns out to be the sort or not."

I had not expected the Skeptic to be so shrewd--shrewd though he often
is. Being also skeptical, his skepticism sometimes overcolours his
imagination.

"Suppose she should leave her slippers kicking around over those
white rugs, drop her kimono in the middle of that pond-lily bed,
and--er--attach a mound of chewing-gum to the corner of the mirror,"
he propounded.

"I should send her home."

"No--you could do better than that. Make her change rooms with the
Philosopher. He wouldn't leave a speck the size of a molecule on all
that whiteness."

"I don't believe he would," I agreed. As the Skeptic went laughing away
downstairs I turned again into the room, in order that I might tie back
the little inner muslin curtains, to let the green branches outside show
between.

* * * * *

Althea arrived at five. The Skeptic, in tennis flannels, was lounging on
the porch as she came up the steps, and scanned her critically over the
racquet he still held, after a brisk set-to with the Gay Lady, who is
one of my other gue