ris!" ejaculated Mary, sitting bolt upright in bed, "and you never
told me! What is more, had it not been for baby's teeth, which brought
it to your mind, I believe you never would have told me, and I might
have taken those unprotected little angels and--Oh! goodness, I can't
bear to think of it."

Morris muttered some apologies, whereon Mary, looking at him
suspiciously through her falling hair, asked:

"Why did you forget to show me the letter? Did you suppress it because
you wanted to go to Beaulieu?"

"No," answered Morris with energy; "I hate Beaulieu. I forgot, that is
all; because I have so much to think about, I suppose."

"So much? I thought that things were arranged now so that you had
nothing at all to think about except how to spend your money and be
happy with me, and adore the dear angels--Yes, I think that perhaps the
nurse had better take her away. Touch the bell, will you? There, she's
gone. Keep her well wrapped up, and mind the draught, nurse.

"No, don't get up yet, Morris; I want to talk to you. You have been very
gloomy of late, just like you used to be before you married, mooning
about and staring at nothing. And what on earth do you do sitting up to
all hours of the morning in that ghosty old chapel, where I wouldn't be
alone at twelve o'clock for a hundred pounds?"

"I read," said Morris.

"Read? Read what? Novels?"

"Sometimes," answered Morris.

"Oh, how can you tell such fibs? Why, that last book by Lady
What's-her-name which came in the Mudie box--the one they say is so
improper--has been lying on your table for over two months, and you
can't tell me yet what it was the heroine did wrong. Morris, you are not
inventing anything more, are you?"

Here was an inspiration. "I admit that I am thinking of a little thing,"
he said with diffidence, as though he were a budding poet with a sonnet
on his mind.

"A little thing? What little thing?"

"Well, a new kind of aerophone designed to work uninfluenced by its
twin."

"Well, and why shouldn't it? Everything can't have a twin--only I
suppose there would be nothing to hear."

"That's just the point," replied Morris in his old professional manner.
"I think there would be plenty to hear if only I could make the machine
sensitive to the sounds and capable of reproducing them."

"What sounds?" asked Mary.

"Well, if, for instance, one could successfully insulate it from the
earth noises, the sounds which permeate space, and even thos