THE ANNIVERSARY.
It began as quite an ordinary day. I read my paper at breakfast and Kathleen poured out the coffee. She wore that little frown between her eyebrows that means that she is thinking out the menu for lunch and dinner and hoping that Nurse hasn't burnt Baby's porridge again. This is married life.
Then I started in a hurry for the office, hurling a "Good-bye, dear" through the open window as I passed. The 9.15 leaves little time for affection. That too is married life.
It was the sweetbriar hedge that made me decide to miss the 9.15. It clutched hold of me suddenly and told me that the sky was very blue and the woods very green, and that the office was an absurd thing on such a day.
I went slowly back home round the outside of the garden wall. Someone was singing in the garden. I stopped and whistled a tune. A face appeared over the wall—rather an attractive face.
"Hello!" it said; "someone I knew a long time ago used to whistle that tune outside my garden."
"Hello!" I said; "come out for a walk?"
"I can't come out at the bidding of young men on the highway. It isn't done."
"Never mind. Come out."
"Have I ever been introduced to you?"
"Introductions went out years ago. Come by the side gate."
She came. She held a shady hat in her hand and walked on tip-toe.
"Sh!" she cautioned; "no one must see me. I have a reputation, you know. I don't want the Vicar to denounce me from the pulpit on Sunday in front of Baby."
"I will be quite frank with you," she went on, holding out her left hand with a dramatic flourish; "I am married—I have a husband."
I gave a hollow groan; then, with a manly effort, I mastered my emotion.
"I hope he's nice to you," I said.
"No, he isn't. He grouches off to the office in the morning and grouches back in the evening and reads newspapers. He's just grouched off now."
"The callous brute!" I hissed through my teeth.
"There's worse than that," she said darkly.
"No!"
"Yes. To-day, to-day is an anniversary, and he forgot it." The manner was that of Madame Bernhardt.
"Anniversaries," I said reassuringly, "are difficult to remember. They accumulate so."
"Are you defending him?" she protested.
"Er—no," I said hastily. "The man's an unmitigated scoundrel. He ought to be divorced or something. What anniversary was it?"
"Our wedding-day," she said with a sob in the voice.
"Heavens!" I said. "Oh, the dastardly ruffian!"
"You wouldn't forget your wedding-day, would you?"
"Never!" I said hoarsely.
"You're quite rather nice," she sighed.
"You're adorable," I said readily.
"How lovely! My husband never says things like that." And she leant against my shoulder.
We got on rather well after that. We had lunch in an inn garden, where you could smell lavender and sweet peas and roses and where there were box hedges turned under magical spells into giant birds. We discovered a stream in a wood with hart's-tongue fern growing along its banks. I picked her armfuls of wild roses.
"It's to make up," I said, "because your brute of a husband forgot your wedding-day."
"I'd love to be married to you," she said brazenly.
I turned aside to brush away a bitter tear.
It was almost dusk when we got back to the side gate.
"Good-bye," she whispered. "Go away quickly; I believe that's the Vicar coming down the road."
Then she shut the gate with gentle swiftness in my face. I walked round to the front door. She was in the hall.
"Hello!" she said; "I hope you had a good day at the office?"
"Thanks," I said; "pretty rotten."
"I've had a lovely day," she said; "I picked up such a nice young man in the high road. He's taking me out to-night. He's just going to ring up for seats."
Without a word I went to the telephone.
The Right Order of Things at Last.
"A Gentleman would be pleased to Recommend his Butler in whose service he has been three years."
—Daily Paper.
"To Americans in London.—The ——, Cornwall, offers you comfortable home while on this side; far away from the madding crown."
—Daily Paper.
Republican prejudices respected.
There was a hard-swearing old sailor
Whose speech might have startled a jailer;
But he frankly avowed
That the charabanc crowd
Would not be allowed on a whaler.