side--"if Adrian makes a big
success, they'll be able to marry."

"Well?" said I.

"Well," said she, with a different intonation. "Don't you see?"

"See what?"

It is wise to irritate your wife on occasion, so as to manifest your
superiority. She shook me by the collar and stamped her foot.

"Don't you care a bit whether your friends get married or not?"

"Not a bit," said I.

Barbara lifted the Macan's Firdusi, still suffering the desecration of
the forgotten cage of white mice, onto my manuscript and hoisted herself
on the cleared corner of the table.

"Doria is my dearest friend. She did my sums for me at school, although
I was three years older. If it hadn't been for us, she and Adrian would
never have met."

"That I admit," I interrupted. "But having started on the path of crime
we're not bound to pursue it to the end."

"You're simply horrid!" she cried. "We've talked for years of the sad
story of these two poor young things, and now, when there's a chance of
their marrying, you say you don't care a bit!"

"My dear," said I, rising, "what with you and Adrian and a bumble-bee
and the child and two white mice, and now Doria, my morning's work is
ruined. Let us go out into the garden and watch the starlings resting in
the walnut trees. Incidentally we might discuss Doria and Adrian."

"Now you're talking sense," said Barbara.

So we went into the garden--and discussed the formation next autumn of a
new rose-bed.

* * * * *

By the afternoon train came Adrian, impeccably vestured and feverish
with excitement. Two evening papers which he brandished nervously,
proclaimed "The Diamond Gate" a masterpiece. The book had been only out
a week--(we country mice knew nothing of it)--and already, so his
publisher informed him, repeat orders were coming in from the libraries
and distributing agents.

"Wittekind, my publisher, declares it's going to be the biggest thing in
first novels ever known. And though I say it as shouldn't, dear old
Hilary,"--he clapped me on the shoulder--"it's a damned fine book."

I shall always remember him as he said this, in the pride of his
manhood, a defiant triumph in his eyes, his head thrown back, and a
smile revealing the teeth below his well-trimmed moustache. He had
conquered at last. He had put poor old Jaffery and fortune-favoured me
in the shade. At one leap he had mounted to planes beyond our dreams.
All this his attitude betokened. He