ty. "Put on my shoes? Certainly, dear," said he, as the cab
began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the
distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him, and
he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is really very serious, though.

"You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist.
No--don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to
astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a cultivation
of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of that infest, and I
think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and, like a fool, I
said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the water
of London, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this
civilised city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what
will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three
puppies--in patches, and the sparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, I
shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more.

"Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber.
My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a
hot day because of Mrs.-----. Oh! _very_ well."

IV.

THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID.

The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You
have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you
must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your
taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a
respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps--for the thing
has happened again and again--there slowly unfolds before the delighted
eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel
richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or
unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one
delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new
miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so
convenient as that of its discoverer? "John-smithia"! There have been
worse names.

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter
Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope, and also,
maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do
in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual m