We are both healthy sleepers, and generally go off like a top, as the saying is, a very short time after our heads touch the pillows. But this night proved to be an exception, for we must have lain quite a quarter of an hour in darkness when my wife began to speak.
"Are you asleep, Edward?"
"No, Maria."
"Do you know," she said drowsily, "I have a funny idea in my head."
"Have you?"
"Yes. It is that you and Mr. Millet laid a little plot for me."
"It isn't a funny idea, Maria; it is a perfectly absurd idea."
"That is what you say, dear; it is never agreeable to be found out. I dare say you thought yourselves very clever. It hasn't raised my opinion of Mr. Millet. I should have liked to believe him a different kind of person."
"Whatever are you driving at, Maria?" I said. "Bob Millet is the simplest fellow in the world, and is incapable of laying a plot."
"Oh, there's no telling. You were old playmates, and he is anxious to please you; he will find out by and by, perhaps, that I am not quite the simpleton he takes me for."