anitor, but I fear the battle with the agent will be the bloodiest
of our campaign."

But we looked forward hopefully. Like all man-eating monsters, having
once tasted human blood, we thirsted for more.

CHAPTER IV

THE ANGEL AND THE AGENT

At the risk of causing the gentle reader to despise us, I feel in duty
bound to set forth the joys and sorrows of our first housekeeping about
as they occurred. By that I mean that I intend to take the keen edge
from our griefs for kindness' sake and to illuminate our joys a little
beyond the stern realities as we found them, in order to permit the
reader to understand the colour of the Paradise that the Angel and I
found in each other. If, therefore, I do not burst into tears at the
moment when any well-regulated woman would, lay it, O gentle reader, at
the door of the Angel, whose deep-seeing understanding not only could
comprehend such a grief as that of parting with my dog, but which also
was capable of sympathizing with suitable violence over a gown which did
not fit or the polite malice of an afternoon visitor.

If I add that when I went into a fury over nothing at all the Angel never
attempted to stop me or to pooh-pooh the cause, but permitted me to
mangle the whole subject until it lay a disorganized, dismembered, wholly
unrecognizable mass at my triumphant feet, I feel reasonably sure that I
shall have proved to every woman his right to his title.

The knowing ones will naturally scorn the method of reasoning by which we
arrived at conclusions, but I have found that nothing is more diverting
or delightful than to go blundering into absurd predicaments, mentally
hand in hand, for the Angel never says "I told you so." That sting being
removed and all three in this happy family, Mary, the Angel, and I, all
being rather handsomely endowed with a sense of humour, it is a constant
source of enjoyment to look back and consider the virulence and contagion
of our ignorance and to count the bruises by which we became wise.

One evening at ten o'clock we came in from making a call and found the
elevator-boy in his shirt-sleeves washing the hall floor. I asked him if
it wasn't a little early to be doing such a thing, as people were still
going and coming, and he said he was acting under Mr. Jepson's orders.
Jepson was the agent.

We said we would remonstrate, and we wrote a letter to Jepson asking him
to have the hall cleaned after twelve o'clock at night and before