about a fortnight ago. But he gave me the vases
instead, and I liked them ever so much better.'

'I shall give you the music-stool. If you wanted it a fortnight ago,
you want it now. It won't make up for the vases, of course, but--'

'No, no,' said Vera, positively.

'Why not?'

'I do not wish you to give me anything. It wouldn't be quite nice,'
Vera insisted.

'But I give you something every Christmas.'

'Do you?' asked Vera, innocently.

'Yes, and you and Stephen give me something.'

'Besides, Stephen doesn't quite like the music-stool.'

'What's that got to do with it? You like it. I'm giving it to you, not
to him. I shall go over to Bostock's tomorrow morning and get it.'

'I forbid you to.'

'I shall.'

Woodruff departed.

Within five minutes the Cheswardine coachman was driving off in the
dogcart to Hanbridge, with the packing-case in the back of the cart,
and a note. He brought back the cigar-cabinet. Stephen had not stirred
from the dining-room, afraid to encounter a tearful wife. Presently his
wife came into the dining-room bearing the vast load of the
cigar-cabinet in her delicate arms.

'I thought it might amuse you to fill it with your cigars--just to pass
the time,' she said.

Stephen's thought was: 'Well, women take the cake.' It was a thought
that occurs frequently to the husbands of Veras.

There was ripe Gorgonzola at dinner. Stephen met it as one meets a
person whom one fancies one has met somewhere but cannot remember where.

The next afternoon the music-stool came, for the second time, into the
house. Charlie brought it in HIS dogcart. It was unpacked
ostentatiously by the radiant Vera. What could Stephen say in
depreciation of this gift from their oldest and best friend? As a fact
he could and did say a great deal. But he said it when he happened to
be all alone in the drawing-room, and had observed the appalling way in
which the music-stool did not 'go' with the Chippendale.

'Look at the d--thing!' he exclaimed to himself. 'Look at it!'

However, the Christmas dinner-party was a brilliant success, and after
it Vera sat on the art nouveau music-stool and twittered songs, and
what with her being so attractive and birdlike, and what with the
Christmas feeling in the air... well, Stephen resigned himself to the
music-stool.

THE MURDER OF THE MANDARIN

I

'What's that you're saying about murder?' asked Mrs Cheswardine as she
came into the large drawing-room, carry