raphs we have inherited.

"Yours sincerely,
"RACHEL DUNSTABLE.

"If your wife brings a maid, perhaps she will kindly let me know."

Doris laughed, and the amused scorn of her laugh annoyed her husband.
However, at that moment their small house-parlourmaid entered with the
tea-tray, and Doris rose to make a place for it. The parlourmaid put it
down with much unnecessary noise, and Doris, looking at her in alarm,
saw that her expression was sulky and her eyes red. When the girl had
departed, Mrs. Meadows said with resignation--

"There! that one will give me notice to-morrow!"

"Well, I'm sure you could easily get a better!" said her husband
sharply.

Doris shook her head.

"The fourth in six months!" she said, sighing. "And she really is a good
girl."

"I suppose, as usual, she complains of me!" The voice was that of an
injured man.

"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work
already, and all these things you have been buying lately--oh, Arthur,
if you _wouldn't_ buy things!--mean more work. You know that copper
coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"

"Well, isn't it a beauty?--a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows,
indignantly.

"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came
to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it
'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should
have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's
going to clean it--'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might
go dirty."

"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of
tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He
turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I
shall have to clean it myself!"

Doris laughed again--this time almost hysterically--but was checked by a
fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a heavy
parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.

"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "_Books_? More books?
Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep last
night for thinking of the book-bills."

"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my
stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a dozen
times over?"

This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in rea