his aunt
that morning; and if he looks wistfully at a pastrycook's window she
takes him inside and buys him cream buns and "maids-of-honour" until he
insists that he has had enough, and politely, but firmly, refuses to eat
another anything. Then, of course, he wants only one helping of pudding
at lunch, and Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something. Mrs.
Harris added that it would be as well for us to come upstairs soon, on
our own account also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel's rendering of
"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party," out of _Alice in Wonderland_. Muriel is
Harris's second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent child; but I
prefer her myself in serious pieces. We said we would finish our
cigarettes and follow almost immediately; we also begged her not to let
Muriel begin until we arrived. She promised to hold the child back as
long as possible, and went. Harris, as soon as the door was closed,
resumed his interrupted sentence.

"You know what I mean," he said, "a complete change."

The question was how to get it.

George suggested "business." It was the sort of suggestion George would
make. A bachelor thinks a married woman doesn't know enough to get out
of the way of a steam-roller. I knew a young fellow once, an engineer,
who thought he would go to Vienna "on business." His wife wanted to know
"what business?" He told her it would be his duty to visit the mines in
the neighbourhood of the Austrian capital, and to make reports. She said
she would go with him; she was that sort of woman. He tried to dissuade
her: he told her that a mine was no place for a beautiful woman. She
said she felt that herself, and that therefore she did not intend to
accompany him down the shafts; she would see him off in the morning, and
then amuse herself until his return, looking round the Vienna shops, and
buying a few things she might want. Having started the idea, he did not
see very well how to get out of it; and for ten long summer days he did
visit the mines in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in the evening wrote
reports about them, which she posted for him to his firm, who didn't want
them.

I should be grieved to think that either Ethelbertha or Mrs. Harris
belonged to that class of wife, but it is as well not to overdo
"business"--it should be kept for cases of real emergency.

"No," I said, "the thing is to be frank and manly. I shall tell
Ethelbertha that I have come to the conclusion a man n