pent too much of his valuable time writing hugely
long letters on all sorts of subjects to David Williams.

David--or Vivie--replied much more laconically. In the first place
he--she--had had her say in the one big outpouring from which I
have quoted so freely; in the second she did not wish to stoke up
these fires lest they should become volcanic and break up a happy
home and a great career. She wrote once saying: "If ever you were in
trouble of any kind; if Linda should die before me, for example, I
would come back to you from the ends of the earth and even if I were
legitimately married to the Prince of Monaco; come back and serve
you as a drudge, as a butt for your wit, as a sick nurse. But
meantime, Michael, you must play the game."

And so after this three months' frenzy was past, he did. It was not
always easy. Linda's devotion was touching. She perceived--though
she hardly liked admitting it--that her husband missed the society
of "that" Mr. Williams, in whom she, for one, never could see
anything particularly striking, and who was now travelling abroad on
a quest it would be indelicate to particularize, and one that in
_her_ opinion should have been taken up by a far older man, the
father of a grown-up family. She strove to replace Williams as an
intelligent companion in the Library and even in the Laboratory. She
gave up works of charity and espionage in Marylebone and many of her
trips into Society, to sit more often with the dear Professor, and
was a little distressed by his groans which seemed to be quite
unprovoked by her remarks or her actions. However as the months went
by, Rossiter buckled down more to his work, and Mrs. Rossiter
noticed that he engaged a new assistant at L300 a year to take
charge of his enormous correspondence. Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a
nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that
gave melancholy to his gaze. But he had a good little wife who came
to make a home for him in Marylebone. Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly
woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one
child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more
interesting than the new Pom. "But it's got such a funny name,
Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and
they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams
she must have been reading Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; but she
said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some