e wear a great 'A'?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Like Hester Prynne--see."

She showed me Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter."

"What made you take this out of the shelves?"

"The title," she replied, simply. "I am so fond of red things; but I
should not like that great red 'A'."

"Those were days," said I, "when people thought they could only be good
by being very cruel."

"They would have been more cruel if Hester had not loved the minister,"
said Carlotta, looking at me wistfully.

"My dear little girl," said I, seeing whither her thoughts were tending,
"do not bother your brain with psychological problems."

"What are--?" began Carlotta.

I pinched the question, as it were, out of her cheek and smiled and took
away the book.

"They are a dreadful disease my little girl has been afflicted with
for some time. When you sit and wrinkle your forehead like this," and I
scowled forbiddingly, whereat Carlotta laughed, "you are suffering from
acute psychological problem."

"Then I am thinking," said Carlotta, reflectively.

"Don't think too much, dear, just now," said I. "It is best for you to
be happy and calm and contented. Otherwise I'll have to tell the doctor,
and he'll give you the blackest and nastiest physic you have ever
tasted."

"To cure me of a what-you-call-it problem?"

"Yes," said I, emphatically.

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta in a superior way, "physic can't cure that."

"You are relying on an exploded fallacy immortalised in a hackneyed
Shakespearian quotation," I remarked.

"Go on," said Carlotta, encouragingly.

"What do you mean?" I asked, taken aback.

"Oh, you darling Seer Marcous," cried Carlotta. "It is so lovely to hear
you talk!"

So I went on talking, and the distress occasioned by the "Scarlet
Letter" was forgotten.

I have mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at the
sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected
the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the
silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these
preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa,
a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a
great dish of _oeufs a la neige_, with lawn or mull or what-not, and
(I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and
hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously.
Sometimes she would press too hard on a s