f no consequence," said the stranger, entering, and
leaving two great brown footprints on the step and several white ones on
the passage. "But I thought I might venture to submit to your
consideration a pound of our unsurpassable tea."

"Tea?" cried Mr. Clarkson, with joyous eagerness. "I suppose you don't
happen to have milk, sugar, bread and butter, and an egg or two
concealed about your person, do you?"

"I am not a conjuror," said the stranger, resuming his hat with some
_hauteur_.

An hour later, Mr. Clarkson was enjoying at his Club a meal that he
endeavoured to regard as lunch, and on reaching the office in the
afternoon he apologised for having been unavoidably detained at home.

"There's no place like home," replied his elderly colleague, with his
usual inanity.

"Perhaps fortunately, there is not," said Mr. Clarkson, and attempting
to straighten his aching back and ease his suffering limbs, he added, "I
am coming to the conclusion that woman's place is the home."

XXVIII

THE CHARM OF COMMONPLACE

George Eliot warned us somewhere not to expect Isaiah and Plato in every
country house, and the warning was characteristic of the time when one
really might have met Ruskin or Herbert Spencer. How uncalled for it
would be now! If Isaiah or Plato were to appear at any country house,
what a shock it would give the company, even if no one present had heard
of their names and death before! We do not know how prophets and
philosophers would behave in a country house, but, to judge from their
books, their conversation could not fail to embarrass. What would they
say when the daughter of the house inquired if her Toy-Pom was not
really rather a darling, or the host proclaimed to the world that he
never took potatoes with fish? What would the host and daughter say if
their guest began to prophesy or discuss the nature of justice? There is
something irreligious in the incongruity of the scene.

The age of the wise, in those astonishing eighteen-seventies, was
succeeded by the age of the epigram, when someone was always expected to
say something witty, and it was passed on, like a sporting tip, through
widening circles. Such sayings as "I can resist everything but
temptation" were much sought after. Common sense became piquant if
reversed, and the good, plain man disappeared in laughter. When a
languid creature told him it was always too late to mend, and never too
young to learn, he was disconcerted. The ba