nday morning, and Miss Peasey _would_ breathe over his shoulder
while he was adding up the bills.

"We apparently live on butter," he grumbled.

"Oh no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper
maintained, irrelevantly.

"I said we apparently live on butter," Guy shouted.

Then, of course Miss Peasey _would_ poke her veiny nose right down into
the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled
his cheek.

"It's the best butter," she said, sorrowfully, at last.

"But my watch is quite all right."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I made an allusion to _Alice in Wonderland_," he shouted.

Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes
in examining various theories on what his housekeeper could have
thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of
his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at
Oxford.

PLASHERS MEAD, WYCHFORD, OXON,
_March 15th_.

DEAR COM,--Why the dickens haven't you written to me for such
ages? I'm going to chuck this place. Haven't you got any scheme on
hand for teaching the democracy to find out the uselessness of
your order? Why not a new critical weekly with me as
bondslave-in-chief? Or doesn't one of your National Liberals want
a bright young fellow to dot his i's and pick up his h's? For L250
a year I'll serve any of them, write his speeches, interview his
constituents or even teach his cubs to prey on the body politic
like Father Lion himself. Seriously, though, if you hear of
anything, do think of me.

Yours ever,
G. H.

Comeragh wrote back at once:

420 BROOK STREET, W.,
_March 16th_.

DEAR OLD GUY,--If you will bury yourself like a misanthropic
badger, you can't expect to be written to by every post. Oddly
enough there has been some talk of starting a new paper; at least
it isn't really very odd because the subject is mooted three times
a day in the advanced political circles round which I revolve.
However, just at present the scheme is in abeyance. Never mind,
I'll fetch you out of your earth at the first excuse that offers
itself. Do you ever go in and see the Balliol people? My young
brother's up now, you know. Ask him over to lunch some day. He's a
shining light of Tory Democracy and is going to preserve, or I
suppose I ought to say conserve, the honor of ou