ers, as soon as the conventionalities would
permit.

She wrote then, for the first time, to Paragot.

"I bear you no malice, my dear Gaston, and I am sure you bear me none.
Your breaking off of our engagement was the only way out of a fantastic
situation. You might have broken it less abruptly; but you were always
sudden. If I may believe Asticot, your own marriage was a lightning
incident. I can laugh now, and so I suppose can your wife; but believe
me this sort of thing does leave a woman rather breathless.

"Wish me happiness, as I wish you. If ever we meet it will be as loyal
friends."

Could woman have spoken more sweetly?

"My dear Joanna," replied Paragot, "I do wish you all the happiness in
the world. You can't fail to have it. You have a real husband as I have
a real wife. Let us thank heaven we have escaped from the moon vapour of
the Ideal, in which we poor humans are apt to lose our way and stray God
knows whither. I am sending you a real marriage gift."

"My dear Asticot," wrote Joanna from an hotel in Florence, "what do you
think your delightful but absurd master has sent me as a wedding
present? It arrived here this morning, to the consternation of the
whole hotel. A crate containing six live ducks. The label stated that
they were real ducks fed by his own hand.

"But what am I to do with six live ducks on a wedding journey, my dear
Asticot? I can't sell them. I hate the idea of eating them--and even if
I didn't, Major Walters and I can't eat six. And I can't put blue
ribbons round their necks, and carry them about with me on my travels as
pets. Can't you see me walking over the Ponte Vecchio followed by them
as by a string of poodles? And they are so voracious. The hotel people
are already charging them full pension terms. Oh, dear! Do tell me what
I am to do with these dreadful fowl!"

"My dearest Lady," I answered. "Offer the ducks like the Dunmow flitch
of bacon to the most happily married couple in Florence."

Whether Joanna acted on my brilliant suggestion I cannot say. A little
while ago I enquired after their ultimate destiny; but Joanna had
forgotten. I believe Major Walters and herself fled from them secretly.

Paragot on his label stated that he had fed the ducks with his own hand.
This was practically true; indeed, in the case of those who declined to
nourish themselves to the requisite degree of fatness, it was literally
true. I have beheld him since perform the astounding operatio