s you may be pleased to imagine. I wanted to wear at the live
Betty's wedding the ceremonious thing which I had given, for purposes
of vanity, to the dead Althea. I was cross with Marigold.

"Why did you let me do such a silly thing? You might have known that I
should want it some day or other. Why didn't you foresee such a
contingency?"

"Why," asked Marigold woodenly, "didn't you or I, sir, or many wiser
than us, foresee the war?"

"Because we were all damned fools," said I.

Marigold approached my chair with his great inexorable tentacles of
arms. It was bed time.

"I'm sorry about the hat, sir," said he.

CHAPTER V

In due course Captain Connor's regiment went off to France; not with
drums beating and colours flying--I wish to Heaven it had; if there had
been more pomp and circumstance in England, the popular imagination
would not have remained untouched for so long a time--but in the cold
silent hours of the night, like a gang of marauders. Betty did not go
to bed after he had left, but sat by the fire till morning. Then she
dressed in uniform and resumed her duties at the hospital. Many a
soldier's bride was doing much the same. And her days went on just as
they did before her marriage. She presented a smiling face to the
world; she said:

"If I'm as happy as can be expected in the circumstances, I think it my
duty to look happier."

It was a valiant philosophy.

The falling of a chimney-stack brought me up against Daniel Gedge, who
before the war did all my little repairs. The chimney I put into the
hands of Day & Higgins, another firm of builders.

A day or two afterwards Hosea shied at something and I discovered it
was Gedge, who had advanced into the roadway expressing a desire to
have a word with me. I quieted the patriotic Hosea and drew up by the
kerb. Gedge was a lean foxy-faced man with a long, reddish nose and a
long blunt chin from which a grizzled beard sprouted aggressively
forwards. He had hard, stupid grey eyes.

"I hope you 'll excuse the liberty I take in stopping you, sir," he
said, civilly.

"That's all right," said I. "What's the matter?"

"I thought I had given you satisfaction these last twenty years."

I assented. "Quite correct," said I.

"Then, may I ask, sir, without offence, why you've called in Day &
Higgins?"

"You may," said I, "and, with or without offence, I'll answer your
question. I've called them in because they're good loyal people.
Higgins has jo