ll out at the front door. Loving
lips had long ago licked most of the paint off, but otherwise the thing
was in admirable preservation; obviously the joy of Mary's childhood, it
had now been sold by her that she might get married.

"Lately purchased by us," said the shopwoman, seeing me look at the toy,
"from a lady who has no further use for it."

I think I have seldom been more indignant with Mary. I bought the doll's
house, and as they knew the lady's address (it was at this shop that I
first learned her name) I instructed them to send it back to her with
the following letter, which I wrote in the shop: "Dear madam, don't be
ridiculous. You will certainly have further use for this. I am, etc.,
the Man Who Dropped the Letter."

It pained me afterward, but too late to rescind the order, to reflect
that I had sent her a wedding present; and when next I saw her she had
been married for some months. The time was nine o'clock of a November
evening, and we were in a street of shops that has not in twenty years
decided whether to be genteel or frankly vulgar; here it minces in the
fashion, but take a step onward and its tongue is in the cup of the
ice-cream man. I usually rush this street, which is not far from my
rooms, with the glass down, but to-night I was walking. Mary was in
front of me, leaning in a somewhat foolish way on the haw-er, and they
were chatting excitedly. She seemed to be remonstrating with him for
going forward, yet more than half admiring him for not turning back, and
I wondered why.

And after all what was it that Mary and her painter had come out to do?
To buy two pork chops. On my honour. She had been trying to persuade
him, I decided, that they were living too lavishly. That was why she
sought to draw him back. But in her heart she loves audacity, and that
is why she admired him for pressing forward.

No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away like two
gleeful children to cook them. I followed, hoping to trace them to their
home, but they soon out-distanced me, and that night I composed the
following aphorism: It is idle to attempt to overtake a pretty young
woman carrying pork chops. I was now determined to be done with her.
First, however, to find out their abode, which was probably within easy
distance of the shop. I even conceived them lured into taking their
house by the advertisement, "Conveniently situated for the Pork
Emporium."

Well, one day--now this really is roma