maid wants a situation in a family where a footman is kept."

The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it was
redoubled when Alma's mother, from the depths of an arm-chair, said,
with her usual solemnity, that she "didn't see nothing to laugh at" in
that, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as they had."

Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert myself once
for all I said:

"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of conversation. I
don't like it."

At last the climax came.

About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which had
been put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless you!" and
next day there came a newspaper containing an account of his last night
at Tilbury.

He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his old
commander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to be in
London, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal which had
promoted his expedition.

They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I remembered
it!), finishing up the evening with a dance on deck in the moonlight;
and when the time came to break up, Martin had made one of his
sentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much grammar), in
which he said that in starting out for another siege of the South Pole
he "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain under the third button
of his double-breasted waistcoat, of the dear ones they were leaving
behind, and of the unknown regions whither they were tending where
dancing would be forgotten."

I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenial
company; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it on
the table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfast
next morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before the
fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in a
mock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fat
body (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter.

It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down and
flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly in
their midst before they were aware of my presence.

"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "we
were just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night in
England."

"So I see," I said, and, boiling with