(This was at the beef and pickles stage.)

No answer.

'Jane!'

Mrs Brindley turned to me. 'My name is not Jane,' she said, laughing,
and making a moue simultaneously. 'He only calls me that to annoy me. I
told him I wouldn't answer to it, and I won't. He thinks I shall give
in because we've got "company"! But I won't treat you as "company", Mr
Loring, and I shall expect you to take my side. What dreadful weather
we're having, aren't we?'

'Dreadful!' I joined in the game.

'Jane!'

'Did you have a comfortable journey down?'

'Yes, thank you.'

'Well, then, Mary!' Mr Brindley yielded.

'Thank you very much, Mr Loring, for your kind assistance,' said his
wife. 'Yes, dearest?'

Mr Brindley glanced at me over his second glass of beer.

'If those confounded kids are going to have mumps,' he addressed his
words apparently into the interior of the glass, 'it probably means the
doctor, and the doctor means money, and I shan't be able to afford the
Hortulus Animoe.'

I opened my ears.

'My husband goes stark staring mad sometimes,' said Mrs Brindley to me.
'It lasts for a week or so, and pretty nearly lands us in the
workhouse. This time it's the Hortulus Animoe. Do you know what it is?
I don't.'

'No,' I said, and the prestige of the British Museum trembled. Then I
had a vague recollection. 'There's an illuminated manuscript of that
name in the Imperial Library of Vienna, isn't there?'

'You've got it in one,' said Mr Brindley. 'Wife, pass those walnuts.'

'You aren't by any chance buying it?' I laughed.

'No,' he said. 'A Johnny at Utrecht is issuing a facsimile of it, with
all the hundred odd miniatures in colour. It will be the finest thing
in reproduction ever done. Only seventy-five copies for England.'

'How much?' I asked.

'Well,' said he, with a preliminary look at his wife,'thirty-three
pounds.'

'Thirty-three POUNDS!' she screamed. 'You never told me.'

'My wife never will understand,' said Mr Brindley, 'that complete
confidence between two human beings is impossible.'

'I shall go out as a milliner, that's all,' Mrs Brindley returned.
'Remember, the Dictionary of National Biography isn't paid for yet.'

'I'm glad I forgot that, otherwise I shouldn't have ordered the
Hortulus.'

'You've not ORDERED it?'

'Yes, I have. It'll be here tomorrow--at least the first part will.'

Mrs Brindley affected to fall back dying in her chair.

'Quite mad!' she complained to me. 'Quite mad. It's