came engaged, but it was certainly before
Dick said humbly, "Darling, I don't think I am that sort of man; really,
I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary," because, with all Pauline's
kindness to sinners, there was none hardened enough to address her as
"darling" without being first engaged to her; so by that I know they
were engaged that evening at the opera, because it was in a Wagnerian
pause that Dick said those words, in a loud voice from the back of the
box. How else should a professional aunt know these things?

Between meeting Dick and becoming engaged to him, Pauline went home and
came back with a larger box and stayed quite a long time, as time goes,
although, as a time in which to become engaged, it was very short, and
Nannie, feeling this, asked Pauline if she knew much about Mr. Dudley,
and was she wise? In spite of this anxiety on Nannie's part, she enjoyed
it all immensely, and wept to her heart's content when the engagement
was announced. Now Dick Dudley was a rich young man, and I wondered
whether other people wept too from motives less pure and simple than
Nannie's.

Pauline wanted me to join a society called "The Deaf Dog Society." The
obligation enforced on members was that they should kneel down, put
their arms round the neck of any deaf dog they should chance to meet,
and say, "Darling, I love you."

"You see," she said, "a deaf dog doesn't know he is deaf, he only
wonders why no one ever speaks to him, why no one ever calls him. So you
see what a splendid society it is, and there is no subscription."

Dick made a stipulation that the benefits of the society should be
conferred on dogs only. He made a point of that.

Chapter X

As there was nothing to wait for, happy people, it was agreed by all
parties that the wedding should take place in August, which kept me
rather late in town; it was hardly worth going away, to come back again,
as back again I had to come, as Betty and Hugh were coming to stay
with me for a night on their way to Thorpshire. It is not astonishing,
perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a
nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is
astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people
who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from
one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of
an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in
something t