ng, but I was really
working back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that's buried a
deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. When I got an opportunity I
hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had the front page all to itself,
and, copying her prim handwriting as well as I could, I inserted above it
the following Thibetan fragment:--

"With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a dak
(a dak I believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey)
On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak,
With never room for chilling chaperone,
'Twere better than a Panhard in the Park."

That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even in the
comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable. I very much doubt if
she'd do it with her own husband in the privacy of the Simplon tunnel.
But poetry, as I've remarked before, should always stimulate the
imagination.

By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you on the 14th,
I said I was dining with the Duchess. Well, I'm not. I'm dining with
you.

THE INNOCENCE OF REGINALD

Reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the buttonhole of his
latest lounge coat, and surveyed the result with approval. "I am just in
the mood," he observed, "to have my portrait painted by someone with an
unmistakable future. So comforting to go down to posterity as 'Youth
with a Pink Carnation' in catalogue--company with 'Child with Bunch of
Primroses,' and all that crowd."

"Youth," said the Other, "should suggest innocence."

"But never act on the suggestion. I don't believe the two ever really go
together. People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but
they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty
minutes. The watched pot never boils over. I knew a boy once who really
was innocent; his parents were in Society, but they never gave him a
moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in company prospectuses,
and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even
in a system for winning at roulette. He never quite lost his faith in
it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose.
When last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury
weren't. All the same, I really am innocent just now of something
everyone accuses me of having done, and so far as I can see, their
accusations will remain unfounded."

"Rather an unexpected attitude for you."

"I love people who do