e too depressing. Beautifully clothed, I jumped into
a taxi and drove to Celia's greengrocer. Celia herself was keeping warm
by paying still more calls.

"I want," I said nervously, "a hundredweight of coal and a cauliflower."
This was my own idea. I intended to place the cauliflower on the top of
a sack, and so to deceive any too-inquisitive coal porter. "No, no," I
should say, "not coal; nice cauliflowers for Sunday's dinner."

"Can't deliver the coal," said the greengrocer.

"I'm going to take it with me," I explained.

He went round to a yard at the back. I motioned my taxi along and
followed him at the head of three small boys who had never seen a
top-hat and a cauliflower so close together. We got the sack into
position.

"Come, come," I said to the driver, "haven't you ever seen a
dressing-case before? Give us a hand with it or I shall miss my train
and be late for dinner."

He grinned and gave a hand. I paid the greengrocer, pressed the
cauliflower into the hand of the smallest boy, and drove off....

It was absurdly easy.

There was no gore at all.

. . . . .

"There!" I said to Celia when she came back. "And when that's done I'll
get you some more."

"Hooray! And yet," she went on, "I'm almost sorry. You see, I was
working off my calls so nicely, and you'd been having some quite busy
days at the office, hadn't you?"

THE ORDER OF THE BATH

"We must really do something about the bath," said Celia.

"We must," I agreed.

At present what we do is this. Punctually at six-thirty or nine, or
whenever it is, Celia goes in to make herself clean and beautiful for
the new day, while I amuse myself with a razor. After a quarter of an
hour or so she gives a whistle to imply that the bathroom is now vacant,
and I give another one to indicate that I have only cut myself once. I
then go hopefully in and find that the bath is half full of water;
whereupon I go back to my room and engage in Dr. Hugh de Selincourt's
physical exercises for the middle-aged. After these are over I take
another look at the bath, discover that it is now three-eighths full,
and return to my room and busy myself with Dr. Archibald Marshall's
mental drill for busy men. By the time I have committed three Odes of
Horace to memory, it may be low tide or it may not; if not, I sit on the
edge of the bath with the daily paper and read about the latest
strike--my mind occupied equally with wondering w