es started
housekeeping with such ideas, homes would be happier. I make bold to
say that you will not have trouble in keeping Mr. Jardine at home
evenings."

I blushed with pleasure at having won the approval of this gentle soul.
But when I told Aubrey he said:

"Poor old fellow! I saw his wife to-day. She weighs well on to four
hundred, and has the air of an anarchist queen. She was engaged in
reducing the agent to his proper level, and _I_ fled."

Evidently the agent conquered, for, alas! within a week we had a new
janitor,--the opposite of my friend in every respect. Harris, the new
janitor, was young, sprightly, self-confident, and an American of the
type "I'm just as good as you are." This challenge lay so plainly in
his eye that almost involuntarily I said, "I know you are," before I
told him that the elevator squeaked.

I hated him from the moment I saw him, but I gave him an extra large
fee to bribe, in the cowardly manner of all citizens of the land of the
free and the home of the brave, a servant to do pleasantly the duties
he is otherwise paid to do. He had three little children, and when one
of them had a birthday I sent them ice-cream and a birthday cake. When
his wife fell ill I sent her my own doctor, for her little pale,
pinched, three-cornered face appealed to me. She did all the janitor's
work. It was her voice at the dumb-waiter instead of his, and once
Aubrey found her emptying a garbage can nearly as large as she was,
when he went down to see why Harris didn't answer our bell. Aubrey
found Harris asleep.

We discovered these things by degrees, and gradually I came to feel
that my mail-chute was the only real, continuous luxury we had gained
with this awful rent. Still we avoided discussing the matter. By
ignoring it, we could keep ourselves deceived a little longer to the
fact that we were being robbed by our own foolishness.

One day I invited the dearest old lady, over ninety years old, to
luncheon. Her daughter was to bring her in her carriage, and I made
Aubrey promise to be in the house by eleven o'clock in case she needed
assistance, and I prepared to have a beautiful day. For weeks we had
planned for this festival, for it was Mrs. Scofield's ninety-first
birthday and would probably be her only outing during the winter. At
ten o'clock I had word that she felt well enough to come, so I told
Aubrey to bring over the ninety-one roses he had ordered in honour of
her birthda