nteenth was the only day.

"Then will you have the seventeenth?" he asked.

"My dear fellow, I can't possibly say off-hand," I protested. "I am not
alone in this. I have a friend with me. I will go back and tell her what
you say. She may decide to withdraw her offer altogether."

I went back and told Celia.

"Bother," she said. "What shall we do?"

"There are other churches. There's your own, for example."

"Yes, but you know I don't like that. Why _shouldn't_ we be married on
the seventeenth?"

"I don't know at all. It seems an excellent day; it lets in my Uncle
Thomas. Of course, it may exclude my Uncle William, but one can't have
everything."

"Then will you go and fix it for the seventeenth to-morrow?"

"Can't I send my solicitor this time?" I asked. "Of course, if you
particularly want me to go myself, I will. But really, dear, I seem to
be living at St. Miriam's nowadays."

And even that wasn't the end of the business. For, just as I was leaving
her, Celia broke it to me that St. Miriam's was neither in her parish
nor in mine, and that, in order to qualify as a bridegroom, I should
have to hire a room somewhere near.

"But I am very comfortable where I am," I assured her.

"You needn't live there, Ronald. You only want to leave a hat there, you
know."

"Oh, very well," I sighed.

She came to the hall with me; and, having said good-bye to her, I
repeated my lesson.

"The seventeenth, fix it up to-morrow, take a room near St. Miriam's,
and leave a hat there. Good-bye."

"Good-bye.... And oh, Ronald!" She looked at me critically as I stood in
the doorway. "You might leave _that_ one," she said.

II.--FURNISHING

"By the way," said Celia suddenly, "what have you done about the
fixtures?"

"Nothing," I replied truthfully.

"Well, we must do _something_ about them."

"Yes. My solicitor--he shall do something about them. Don't let's talk
about them now. I've only got three hours more with you, and then I must
dash back to my work."

I must say that any mention of fixtures has always bored me intensely.
When it was a matter of getting a house to live in I was all energy. As
soon as Celia had found it, I put my solicitor on to it; and within a
month I had signed my name in two places, and was the owner of a highly
residential flat in the best part of the neighbourhood. But my effort so
exhausted me that I have felt utterly unable since to cope with the
question of the curtain-rod in the bath