bacco every week. Uncle James might just
as well have lain on his back in the garden and chattered to the lilac
tree about the habits of caterpillars."

"I really will not listen to such things about your uncle," protested
Mrs. James Gurtleberry angrily.

"My own case is just as bad and just as tragic," said the niece,
dispassionately; "nearly everything about me is conventional
make-believe. I'm not a good dancer, and no one could honestly call me
good-looking, but when I go to one of our dull little local dances I'm
conventionally supposed to 'have a heavenly time,' to attract the ardent
homage of the local cavaliers, and to go home with my head awhirl with
pleasurable recollections. As a matter of fact, I've merely put in some
hours of indifferent dancing, drunk some badly-made claret cup, and
listened to an enormous amount of laborious light conversation. A
moonlight hen-stealing raid with the merry-eyed curate would be
infinitely more exciting; imagine the pleasure of carrying off all those
white minorcas that the Chibfords are always bragging about. When we had
disposed of them we could give the proceeds to a charity, so there would
be nothing really wrong about it. But nothing of that sort lies within
the Mappined limits of my life. One of these days somebody dull and
decorous and undistinguished will 'make himself agreeable' to me at a
tennis party, as the saying is, and all the dull old gossips of the
neighbourhood will begin to ask when we are to be engaged, and at last we
shall be engaged, and people will give us butter-dishes and
blotting-cases and framed pictures of young women feeding swans. Hullo,
Uncle, are you going out?"

"I'm just going down to the town," announced Mr. James Gurtleberry, with
an air of some importance: "I want to hear what people are saying about
Albania. Affairs there are beginning to take on a very serious look.
It's my opinion that we haven't seen the worst of things yet."

In this he was probably right, but there was nothing in the immediate or
prospective condition of Albania to warrant Mrs. Gurtleberry in bursting
into tears.

FATE

Rex Dillot was nearly twenty-four, almost good-looking and quite
penniless. His mother was supposed to make him some sort of an allowance
out of what her creditors allowed her, and Rex occasionally strayed into
the ranks of those who earn fitful salaries as secretaries or companions
to people who are unable to cope unaided wi