me, Marjorie ran into the hall to give me one of her
smooth evening kisses. I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my
stubbly ones when--

"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"

"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"

"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You
really might have been more careful."

"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the
teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a
sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first
outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or,
as the headlines would have it:--

NEAR BREAKING-POINT.
STRAIN OF BUSINESS LIFE.
ORIGIN OF THE DRUG HABIT.

After a bath and a change I felt better, and came down to dinner humming
a sentimental ballad in Marjorie's honour. But the word "love" died on
my lips when I saw that in the lap of Marjorie's pretty pink gown
reposed the stray cat. The colour-clash and the misapplication of
caresses which should have been my monopoly threw me back with a jerk to
a state of bearishness.

"Surely you're not going to keep that animal?" I asked.

"Of course I am, as long as she likes to stay," said Marjorie. "She's
very fond of me, aren't you, pussy? Fonder than my husband, I 'spect."

"I know these stray cats," I said. "Stiff with microbes. Tribes of mangy
lovers prowling round the house. A nest of kittens in my top-hat. I
know."

"Poor li'l pussy," cooed Marjorie. "Don'tum listen to the big coarse
man."

"Coarse be----"

In other (and more suitable) words--

HUSBAND'S PROFANITY.
MASK OFF AFTER TWO YEARS.
PEEVISH ABOUT WIFE'S PET.

Marjorie said coldly that she didn't know I had such a temper. I said
hotly that I didn't know she could be so infantile.

We went on discovering things we hadn't known about each other:--

THE TESTING TIME
IN CONJUGAL FELICITY,
IS IT THE THIRD YEAR?

Dinner was an ordeal. I felt miles apart from Marjorie. A great gulf
filled with black-and-yellow cat lay between us. Once only the topic of
the beast arose (on the subject of fish-bones) and just as I was
becoming big and coarse again the maid entered with the joint. She must
have heard what I said.

SHOULD SERVANTS TELL?
BACKDOOR SCANDAL.

Still, the meal itself was a cheering one, and, after Marjorie had
risen, the sentimental ballad mood gained on me again. After all, what
was a s