if she speaks at all he groans and moves his ears. Charming woman, very. Quite pretty. There may be nothing in it. I saw no actual violence. Sharper may merely have been suffering. He wouldn’t be happy if he wasn’t. Have a drink. No?”

   Halfpenny Hole lay in the bottom of a slope seven miles from Dilborough. Dilborough was almost the same distance from Halfpenny Hole. Jawbones was, I think we must say, an old-world house, and had the date 1623 carved over the doorway. Luke Sharper had carved it himself. A little further down the road there was—there’s no other word for it—an old-world bridge with—I’m afraid we must have it once more—an old-world stream running underneath it. It gave one the impression that it had always been like that. Always the stream under the bridge. Never the bridge under the stream. But now that the Garden Settlement had come things might be very different. Houses were going up; Mr. Doom Dagshaw’s Mammoth Circus was going up; even the rates were going up.

   At the end of his honeymoon Luke Sharper went to see a man about a dog, and left his wife to prepare Jawbones for his accommodation. She was a good housekeeper, and Luke acknowledged it. Whenever he thought about her at all, he always added “but she

    is

   a good housekeeper.” He was desperately fair.

   “This,” said Mabel, opening a door, as Luke began his visit of inspection, “this is your den.”

   Luke’s ears moved. He kissed her twice. “But, you know, I cannot bear it. There are some words which I am unable to endure, such as salt-cellar, tuberculosis, tennis-net and den.”

   “Very well,” said Mabel, a little coldly, “we’ll call it your cage. And just look. There is a pair of my father’s old slippers that I have brought for you. Size thirteen. You’ve got none quite like that, have you?”

   He put one arm round her waist.

   “Where did you say the dustbin was?” he asked.

   “But,” she said amazed, “you don’t mean to say——Surely you wear slippers?”

   “I never was,” he replied firmly. Nor did he.

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