ived in Surbiton.

The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-wide
traveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a net
total of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwards
over those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more of
going without a break.

Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long and
somewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.

"I say, mater, guess who gave me these--have one?"

Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand,
plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumes
of smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled the
smoking-room of any West End ladies' club.

"Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot! Who?"

"The Grizzly Bear!"

"_No_!"

"He _did_! He'd been ashore!"

"_No_!"

"Yes! I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something to
the Babe when he slipped down the gangway. I do wish we weren't so hard
up. It's an awful rag going ashore. He came back an hour ago, found a
letter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since. It was a
man's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"

Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with the
aid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat down
beside her.

"He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and he
gave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson's
hateful little brat--you know--Muriel--we should have had a good long
talk. The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it's
extraordinary how he lets children worry him."

"Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"

Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear lady
had been clawed by the grizzly.

"Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night! It'll be frightfully
hot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up on
the boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."

"Yes! I might--the blue _does_ want ironing!" replied the daughter,
taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority of
women play between themselves. For what ultimate benefit it is
impossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled they
know, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.

Anyway the sequin wa