h smiles almost curling up their corners. Does the
brownie travel with us, then?

I begin to suspect that some of the good men who have been blamed for
forgetting to mail letters in their pockets have been, not indeed
blameless, but at least misunderstood. Probably they do not forget.
Probably they hunt for the letters and cannot find them, and conclude that
they have already mailed them.

In the matter of the home haystacks Jonathan's confidence in himself has
at last been shaken. For a long time, when he returned to me after some
futile search, he used to say, "Of course you can look for it if you like,
but it is _not_ there." But man is a reasoning, if not altogether a
reasonable, being, and with a sufficient accumulation of evidence,
especially when there is some one constantly at hand to interpret its
teachings, almost any set of opinions, however fixed, may be shaken. So
here.

Once when we shut up the farm for the winter I left my fountain pen
behind. This was little short of a tragedy, but I comforted myself with
the knowledge that Jonathan was going back that week-end for a day's hunt.

"Be sure to get the pen first of all," I said, "and put it in your
pocket."

"Where is it?" he asked.

"In the little medicine cupboard over the fireplace in the orchard room,
standing up at the side of the first shelf."

"Why not on your desk?" he asked.

"Because I was writing tags in there, and set it up so it would be out of
the way."

"And it _was_ out of the way. All right. I'll collect it."

He went, and on his return I met him with eager hand--"My pen!"

"I'm sorry," he began.

"You didn't forget!" I exclaimed.

"No. But it wasn't there."

"But--did you look?"

"Yes, I looked."

"Thoroughly?"

"Yes. I lit three matches."

"Matches! Then you didn't get it when you first got there!"

"Why--no--I had the dog to attend to--and--but I had plenty of time when I got
back, and it _wasn't_ there."

"Well--Dear me! Did you look anywhere else? I suppose I may be mistaken.
Perhaps I did take it back to the desk."

"That's just what I thought myself," said Jonathan. "So I went there, and
looked, and then I looked on all the mantelpieces and your bureau. You
must have put it in your bag the last minute--bet it's there now!"

"Bet it isn't."

It wasn't. For two weeks more I was driven to using other pens--strange and
distracting to the fingers and the eyes and the mind. Then Jonathan was to
go up again.