th my treasure without appearing to be aware of its
presence. But towards evening his two principal friends came to play
bridge with him, and then, from the ambush of my own apartments, I heard
the screechy voice of Mr. Vivian saying:

"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a Pape?"

"Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's my wife's
little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest to
make me a 'vert.'"

My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly more
successful.

Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely without a
rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room with
them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early,
before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to Covent
Garden, through the empty and echoing streets, while the air of London
was fresh with the breath of morning and the big city within its
high-built walls seemed to dream of the green fields beyond.

I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were rolling
in from the country with huge crates of red and white roses, bright with
the sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then buying the largest and
loveliest and costliest bunch of them (a great armful, as much as I
could hold), I hurried back to the hotel and set them in vases and
glasses in every part of my husband's room--his desk, his sideboard, his
mantelpiece, and above all his table, which a waiter was laying for
breakfast--until the whole place was like a bridal bower.

"Ah, this is something like," I heard my husband say as he came out of
his bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious terrier at his
heels.

I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while drawing
on his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter, who was
clearing the table,

"Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming flowers
with which she has decorated my room this morning."

"But it wasn't the manageress, my lord," said the waiter.

"Then who was it?"

"It was her . . . her ladyship," said the waiter.

"O-oh!" said my husband in a softer, if more insinuating tone, and a few
minutes afterwards he went out whistling.

God knows that was small reward for the trouble I had taken, but I was
so uplifted by the success of my experiment that I determined to go
farther, and when towards evening of the same day a group of