aily
Review."

"You see, such an early newspaper is a luxury now," said Erica. "Not
that he's been behaving well abroad. He promised me when we started that
he'd eschew newspapers altogether and give his brain an entire rest; but
there is a beguiling reading room at Florence, and there was no keeping
him away from it."

"What's that? What are you saying?" said Raeburn, absently.

"That very soon, father, you will be as absent-minded as King
Stars-and-Garters in the fairy tale, who one day, in a fit of
abstraction, buttered his newspaper and tried to read his toast."

Raeburn laughed and threw down the "Daily Review."

"Saucier than ever, isn't she, Tom? Well, we've come back to a few
disagreeables; but then we've come back, thank man! To roast beef and
Turkey towels, and after kickshaws and table napkins, one knows how to
appreciate such things."

"We could have done with your kickshaws here," said Tom. "If you hadn't
come back soon, Erica, I should have gone to the bad altogether, for
home life, with the cook to cater for one, is intolerable. That creature
has only two ideas in her head. We rang the changes on rice and stewed
rhubarb. The rhubarb in its oldest stage came up four days running. We
called it the widow's curse! Then the servants would make a point of
eating onions for supper so that the house was insufferable. And at last
we were driven from pillar to post by a dreadful process called house
cleaning in which, undoubtedly, life is not worth living. In the end,
Mr. Osmond took pity on me and lent me Brian's study. Imagine heretical
writings emanating from that room!"

This led the conversation round to Brian's visit to Florence, and Erica
was not sorry to be interrupted by a note from Mr. Bircham, requesting
her to write an article on the Kilbeggan murder. She found that the
wheels of the household machinery would need a good deal of attention
before they would move as smoothly as she generally contrived to make
them. Things had somehow "got to wrongs" in her absence. And when at
length she thought everything was in train and had got thoroughly into
the spirit of a descriptive article on the Irish tragedy, the cook
of two ideas interrupted her with what seemed, in contract, the most
trivial matters.

"If you please, miss," she said, coming into the green room, just as the
three villains in black masks were in the act of killing their victim,
"I thought you'd wish to know that we are wanting a new s