we all were on Monday morning with everything changed, Mrs. Wreford
sulking in bed and Wreford displaying a polite but firm hatred of me and
all the world. In this case my feeling was that something dreadful _was_
happening.

"Mornin', Wreford," said I, as I took my place at table.

"Mornin', Everall," he grunted, barely looking up from his letters, and
that seemed to end the dialogue. When, however, one's host is also one's
most valuable patient, there is call for a special effort. He had all
the correspondence, I had none; in an emergency this suggested itself as
a matter of comment.

"To me," I said chattily, "things seem to be just as badly managed at
the Post Office as they were in SAMUEL'S time."

"Was there a post office in those days?" he asked, without noticeable
enthusiasm.

"_The_ SAMUEL HERBERT," I explained, and that again seemed to end it.

After a pause, "However," I said kindly, "you enjoy your letters and I
will find what consolation and company I can in a poached egg."

"Enjoy?" asked Wreford. "But you are being sarcastic, no doubt."

"Only panel doctors can afford to be that," I murmured.

Wreford's first letter appeared to pain him, and he looked at me
sternly, as if the evils of this life were all my fault. Then he unbent
a little.

"Tell me, Everall," said he, "have you enjoyed your little visit to us?"

The question took me by surprise but it was, at any rate, one to be
answered in the affirmative.

"And you are proportionately grateful?" he pursued.

I protested, somewhat lamely, that I most certainly was.

"Gratitude, it seems," said he, "may express itself in the most odd
manner."

"Mine," I replied stiffly, "will express itself in the customary
letter."

"What, another?" he asked, adding, after a pause, "Do you refer to the
note which your solicitors will write me forthwith and charge me
three-and-sixpence for?"

I thought deeply but was baffled. "It is full early in the morning for
the cryptic and abstruse," I said.

Wreford sighed as he slowly folded up his letter and put it in its
envelope. "It is the one moment in the week," he explained, "when the
very worst must be expected."

I begged him to elucidate the position.

"Suppose," said he, "you had invited a man to stay with you for the
week-end, had motored him down from town on the Friday night and given
him dinner and a nice big bed, and on Saturday more meals and more bed,
and on Sunday still more meals and sti