did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray

door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day."

We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used to put us head first down rabbit-holes.

"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man.

"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!"

"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'"

"I don't like that phrase, Christina!"

"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!"

Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather, but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman.