ARDILAUN. Not so; my meals are perfect--fit for a king.

CYNICUS. Your wife's recipes, I suppose? Our English cooks are dolts at
vegetable dressing.

ARDILAUN. They are. She superintends--she prefers cookpots to poetry.
That is the hard part of it. Were it Letitia----

CYNICUS. The vegetables might go to the----

ARDILAUN. Nothing of the kind. A clever woman could master such trivial
details in a trice.

CYNICUS. And pen her books with a squint eye on the saucepan?

ARDILAUN. You say she only works at night.

CYNICUS. And your matutinal repast?

ARDILAUN. My milk and lentils at eight--anyone could manage that----

CYNICUS. And Letitia's coffee and roll in bed at nine, her _dejeuner a
la Fourchette_ at eleven, your lunch at one, her snack at four, your tea
at five----

ARDILAUN. Come, you're overdrawing it. We should at least have dinner
together.

CYNICUS. Yes; Letitia is what you call a flesh-eater and wine-bibber
like myself. We'd have a good square meal, finishing up with some fine
"fruity." I forgot; in the ideal household the "pug's" noted port would
be conspicuous by its absence.

ARDILAUN. Poets don't gamble to fill their cellars.

CYNICUS. So they go empty. Poor Letitia!

ARDILAUN. Letitia would prefer love to the rarest vintage that was ever
pressed.

CYNICUS. How about the machinery? The nectar of the gods won't drive a
cog-wheel.

ARDILAUN. I suppose I have machinery, as you call it?

CYNICUS. Greased on special principles, too. Drop your principles and
bang goes everything.

ARDILAUN. Puns won't silver your moral bolus. You can't convince me.

CYNICUS. Morally? I don't attempt to, but practically I can show you it
is one thing to love flowers, rave over their colour and scent, and
another to crack your spine in digging and hoeing, watering,
slug-catching, and all the rest of it.

ARDILAUN. You've shifted your premises.

CYNICUS. Pardon me; instead of preaching I used the Kodak. Tableau: Two
precious exotics; to right, the "pug," armed with spade and
watering-pot; to left, your wife, darning-needle in hand, impaling
slugs.

ARDILAUN. Bosh! You're too irritating for words; I'm off. (_Exit in a
rage._)

CYNICUS. To develop the negative, eh?

Pain's Pensioners.

"Love's wings are over-fleet,
And like the panther's feet
The feet of love."

The little travelling clock on his mantel struck with soft, gong-like
chime; it seemed to speak from a great way off