ovember. By good fortune the weather remained sunny,
but the nights were crisp. Belinda was given an oil-stove for her attic
bedroom. Mrs. Blackwell heard no more complaints of the cold, but
sometimes she and her husband could hear uneasy creakings upstairs late
at night. "I wonder if Barbados really is so warm?" she asked Bob. "I'm
sure it can't be warmer than Belinda's room. She never opens the
windows, and the oil-stove has to be filled every morning."

"Perhaps some day we can get an Eskimo maid," suggested Mr. Blackwell
drowsily. He wore his Palm Beach suit every night for dinner, but
underneath it he was panoplied in heavy flannels.

* * * * *

Through Mr. Chester the rumour of the Blackwells' experiment in
psychology spread far among suburban husbands. On the morning train less
fortunate commuters, who had already started their fires, referred to
him as "the little brother of the iceberg." Mr. and Mrs. Chester came to
dinner on the 16th of November. Both the men loudly clamoured for
permission to remove their coats, and sat with blanched and chattering
jaws. Mr. Blackwell made a feeble pretence at mopping his brow, but when
the dessert proved to be ice-cream his nerve forsook him. "N-no,
Belinda," he said. "It's too warm for ice-cream to-night. I don't
w--want to get chilled. Bring me some hot coffee." As she brought his
cup he noticed that her honest brown brow was beaded with perspiration.
"By George," he thought, "this mental suggestion business certainly
works." Late that evening he lit the log fire and revelled by the blaze
in an ulster.

The next evening when Mr. Blackwell came home from business he met the
doctor in the hall.

"Hello, doc," he said, "what's up?"

"Mrs. Blackwell called me in to see your maid," said the doctor. "It's
the queerest thing I've met in twenty years' practice. Here it is the
17th of November, and cold enough for snow. That girl has all the
symptoms of sunstroke and prickly heat."

MY FRIEND

To-day we called each other by our given names for the first time.

Making a new friend is so exhilarating an adventure that perhaps it will
not be out of place if I tell you a little about him. There are not many
of his kind.

In the first place, he is stout, like myself. We are both agreed that
many of the defects of American letters to-day are due to the sorry
leanness of our writing men. We have no Chestertons, no Bellocs. I look
to Don