then ring
the bell?" I was really beginning to lose patience with Eliza.

However, by three o'clock I had Eliza in the drawing-room, with a
magazine and paper-knife by her side, as if she had been reading. She
was really darning socks, but they could easily be concealed in an
empty art flower-pot when the front bell rang.

* * * * *

We sat in the drawing-room until six, but, strangely enough, the Hon.
Eugene Clerrimount never came. The trifle that I had spent on the
Madeira cake and macaroons was nothing, but it did wound my feelings
that he had not even thought it worth while to explain his inability to
keep his appointment.

And on the Monday I said to Perkins, rather sharply: "There was that
matter of four shillings with your friend. I've not received the money,
and I should thank you to see about it."

"What?" said Perkins. "You ask my friend and me to come and drink with
you, and then want me to dun him for the money to pay for it. Well, I
_am_ blowed!"

Oh, the whole thing was most unsatisfactory and incomprehensible!

THE HAT

I had long believed that all was not right with my hat. I could prove
nothing, but I had no doubt in my own mind that the girl took liberties
with it. It is very easy to brush a silk hat the wrong way, for
instance, but silk hats do not brush themselves the wrong way; if it is
done, some one must have done it. Morning after morning I found marks
on my hat which I could not account for. Well, I said nothing, but I
made up my mind to keep my eyes open. It was not only the injury to the
hat--it was the impertinence to myself that affected me.

One Saturday afternoon, while I was at home, a costermonger came to the
door with walnuts. The girl answered the bell, and presently I saw the
coster and his cart go past the dining-room window. I don't know why it
was, or how it was, but a suspicion came over me. I stepped sharply to
the door, and looked out into the passage. There was no one there. The
front door was open, and the kitchen door was open, and in a position
between the two, against the umbrella-stand, was--something worse than
ever I had expected.

I picked that hat up just as it was, with the walnuts inside it, and
placed it on the dining-room table. Then I called to Eliza to come
down-stairs.

"What is it?" she asked, as she entered the dining-room.

I pointed to the hat. "This kind of thing," I said, "has been going on
f