as over and gone.

In the three days immediately preceding the festival, such popularity
with the tradesmen of the town as we had forfeited was more than
redeemed at the expense, so far as I was concerned, of an overdraft at
the bank. Absurdly handsome presents were purchased right and left.
Adele's acquaintance was extremely wide. Observing that it was also in
every instance domiciled in the United States, with the density of a
male I ventured to point out that upon the day which my wife's presents
were intended to enrich, all of them would indubitably be lying in the
custody of the French postal authorities. Thereupon it was gently
explained to me that, so long as a parcel had been obviously posted
before Christmas, its contents were always considered to have arrived
"in time"--a conceit which I had hitherto imagined to be the property
of bookmakers alone. In short, from first to last, my wife was
inexorable. But for the spectacle of Berry and Jonah being
relentlessly driven along the same track, life would have lost its
savour. Indeed, as far as we three were concerned, most of the working
hours of Christmas Eve were spent at the post office.

The registration of a postal packet in France is no laughing matter.
When a coloured form has to be obtained, completed, and deliberately
scrutinised before a parcel can be accepted, when there is only one
pen, where there are twenty-seven people in front of you--each with two
or more packages to be registered--when there is only one registration
clerk, when mental arithmetic is not that clerk's _forte_, when it is
the local custom invariably to question the accuracy first of the
postage demanded and then of the change received, when the atmosphere
of the post office is germane to poison-gas, and when, you are bearing
twelve parcels and leading a Sealyham, the act of registration and its
preliminaries are conducive to heart-failure.

The miniature of herself, however, with which my wife presented me on
Christmas Day atoned for everything....

And now--Christmas was over and gone.

The New Year, too, had come in with a truly French explosion of
merriment and good-will.

It was, in fact, the fourth day of January, and, with the exception of
my cousins, who were upon the links, we were proceeding gingerly down
the Rue du Lycee, en route for Lourdes, when my sister gave a cry and
called upon me to stop.

As I did so, I saw Mrs. Featherstone stepping towards us across