tampede. The Archdeacon's wife looked at me.
Kipling or someone has described somewhere the look a foundered camel
gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. The
peptonised reproach in the good lady's eyes brought the passage vividly
to my mind.

I played my last card.

"Reginald, it's getting late, and a sea-mist is coming on." I knew that
the elaborate curl over his right eyebrow was not guaranteed to survive a
sea-mist.

* * * * *

"Never, never again, will I take you to a garden-party. Never . . . You
behaved abominably . . . What did the Caspian see?"

A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed over
Reginald's face.

"After all," he said, "I believe an apricot tie would have gone better
with the lilac waistcoat."

REGINALD ON CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I don't want a
"George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a Christmas present. The fact
cannot be too widely known.

There ought (he continued) to be technical education classes on the
science of present-giving. No one seems to have the faintest notion of
what anyone else wants, and the prevalent ideas on the subject are not
creditable to a civilised community.

There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who "knows a
tie is always useful," and sends you some spotted horror that you could
only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road. It _might_ have been
useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have
served the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away
the birds--for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of
commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative
in the country.

Then there are aunts. They are always a difficult class to deal with in
the matter of presents. The trouble is that one never catches them
really young enough. By the time one has educated them to an
appreciation of the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in
the West End, they die, or quarrel with the family, or do something
equally inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is always
so precarious.

There is my Aunt Agatha, _par exemple_, who sent me a pair of gloves last
Christmas, and even got so far as to choose a kind that was being worn
and had the correct number of buttons. But--_they were nines_! I sent
them to a boy whom I hated intimately: he didn't wea