een in this room nearly an hour.
Please unlock the door.

"Then we went downstairs."

After that follow one or two postscripts of a reflective nature, the
general trend of which seems to indicate that Robin is rather a dear,
but quite impossible.

* * * * *

"A flippant and unfeeling letter," you say, sir? Perhaps. But there is
often no reserve so deep or so delicate as that which is veiled by a
frivolous exterior and a mocking attitude towards sentiment in general.
Some sensitive people are so afraid of having their hearts dragged to
light that, to escape inquisition, they pretend they do not possess any.
Moreover, I know Dolly well enough to be certain that she was not quite
so brutally unkind to Robin during this interview as she would have us
believe.

"The blundering creature! He went about it in _quite_ the wrong way,"
you say, madam? Very likely. But if a woman only took a man when he went
about it in exactly the right way, how very few marriages there would
be!

BOOK TWO.

THE FINISHED ARTICLE

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A MISFIRE.

I.

There is an undefinable character and distinctiveness about Sunday
morning which is not possessed by any other day of the week.

Not that the remaining six are lacking in individuality. Monday is a
depressed and reluctant individual; Tuesday is a full-blooded and
energetic citizen; Wednesday a cheerful and contented gentleman who does
not intend to overwork himself to-day,--this is probably due to the fact
that we used to have a half-holiday on Wednesdays at school; and when I
got into Parliament I found that the same rule held there; Thursday I
regard as one who ploughs steadily on his way, lacking enthusiasm but
comfortably conscious of a second wind; Friday is a debilitated but
hopeful toiler, whose sole joy in his work lies in anticipating its
speedy conclusion; and Saturday is a radiant fellow with a straw hat and
a week-end bag.

Still, one week-day is very like another at waking time. My mental
vision, never pellucid, is in its most opaque condition in the early
grey of the morning; and at Oxford, I remember, I found it necessary to
instruct my scout to rouse me from slumber in some such fashion as this:
"Eight o'clock on Thursday mornin', sir!" (as if I had slept since
Monday at least), or "'Alf-past nine, slight rain, and a Toosday, sir!"

However, no one was ever yet needed to inform me that it was Sunday
morni