of mine with the proper care, you will
be aware that I have frequently had occasion to emphasise the fact that
Aunt Dahlia is all right.

She is the one, if you remember, who married old Tom Travers _en secondes
noces_, as I believe the expression is, the year Bluebottle won the
Cambridgeshire, and once induced me to write an article on What the
Well-Dressed Man is Wearing for that paper she runs--_Milady's Boudoir_.
She is a large, genial soul, with whom it is a pleasure to hob-nob. In her
spiritual make-up there is none of that subtle gosh-awfulness which
renders such an exhibit as, say, my Aunt Agatha the curse of the Home
Counties and a menace to one and all. I have the highest esteem for Aunt
Dahlia, and have never wavered in my cordial appreciation of her
humanity, sporting qualities and general good-eggishness.

This being so, you may conceive of my astonishment at finding her at my
bedside at such an hour. I mean to say, I've stayed at her place many a
time and oft, and she knows my habits. She is well aware that until I
have had my cup of tea in the morning, I do not receive. This crashing in
at a moment when she knew that solitude and repose were of the essence
was scarcely, I could not but feel, the good old form.

Besides, what business had she being in London at all? That was what I
asked myself. When a conscientious housewife has returned to her home
after an absence of seven weeks, one does not expect her to start racing
off again the day after her arrival. One feels that she ought to be
sticking round, ministering to her husband, conferring with the cook,
feeding the cat, combing and brushing the Pomeranian--in a word, staying
put. I was more than a little bleary-eyed, but I endeavoured, as far as
the fact that my eyelids were more or less glued together would permit,
to give her an austere and censorious look.

She didn't seem to get it.

"Wake up, Bertie, you old ass!" she cried, in a voice that hit me between
the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.

If Aunt Dahlia has a fault, it is that she is apt to address a _vis-a-vis_
as if he were somebody half a mile away whom she had observed riding
over hounds. A throwback, no doubt, to the time when she counted the day
lost that was not spent in chivvying some unfortunate fox over the
countryside.

I gave her another of the austere and censorious, and this time it
registered. All the effect it had, however, was to cause her to descend
to pe