to hear it. I have trotted out the indigestion jokes
till the sight of one of them gives me indigestion myself. I have
ridiculed the family gathering. I have scoffed at the Christmas present.
I have made witty use of paterfamilias and his bills. I have--"

"Did I ever show you," I broke off to ask as we were crossing the
Haymarket, "that little parody of mine on Poe's poem of 'The Bells'? It
begins--" He interrupted me in his turn--

"Bills, bills, bills," he repeated.

"You are quite right," I admitted. "I forgot I ever showed it to you."

"You never did," he replied.

"Then how do you know how it begins?" I asked.

"I don't know for certain," he admitted, "but I get, on an average,
sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way. I
thought, perhaps, yours did also."

"I don't see how else it could begin," I retorted. He had rather annoyed
me. "Besides, it doesn't matter how a poem begins, it is how it goes
on that is the important thing and anyhow, I'm not going to write you
anything about Christmas. Ask me to make you a new joke about a plumber;
suggest my inventing something original and not too shocking for a child
to say about heaven; propose my running you off a dog story that can be
believed by a man of average determination and we may come to terms. But
on the subject of Christmas I am taking a rest."

By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.

"I don't blame you," he said, "if you are as sick of the subject as I
am. So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and Christmas
is over till next June at the office, I shall begin it at home. The
housekeeping is gone up a pound a week already. I know what that means.
The dear little woman is saving up to give me an expensive present that
I don't want. I think the presents are the worst part of Christmas. Emma
will give me a water-colour that she has painted herself. She always
does. There would be no harm in that if she did not expect me to hang it
in the drawing room. Have you ever seen my cousin Emma's water-colours?"
he asked.

"I think I have," I replied.

"There's no thinking about it," he retorted angrily. "They're not the
sort of water-colours you forget."

He apostrophized the Circus generally.

"Why do people do these things?" he demanded. "Even an amateur artist
must have SOME sense. Can't they see what is happening? There's that
thing of hers hanging in the passage. I put it in the passage because
there's not muc