When I had finished the letter, I wiped my pen on the inside of my coat. This is my general custom. Some men wipe their pens on their hair,—not a very cleanly habit, in my opinion,—besides, unless the colour of the hair is exceptionally dark, the ink shows.
I had no sooner wiped my pen on the inside of my coat than I remembered Eliza's present. Determined to show her that I appreciated it, I took a full dip of ink, stepped into the drawing-room, and wiped the pen on the new pen-wiper. Then I called up-stairs: "Eliza, I have just found your present very useful. Would you like to come and look?" She happened to be fastening something up the back at the time, but she came down a minute afterward.
She picked up the pen-wiper, looked at it, exclaimed "Ruined!" and then walked rapidly out of the room. I followed her, and asked what was the matter.
It appeared that the words, "Kindly clean the pen," meant that the pen was to be cleaned on a scrap of paper before the pen-wiper was used. Eliza said that I might have known that the pretty muslin was not intended to be a perfect mess of ink.
"Well," I said, "I didn't know. That's all there is to say about it."
But it was not, apparently, all that there was to say about it. In fact, the whole thing cast an unpleasant shade over the evening of my birthday. Finally I took a strong line, and refused to speak at all.
THE 9.43
In the course of conversation on Saturday evening it had transpired that Eliza had never been in St. Paul's Cathedral. "Then," I said, "you shall go there to-morrow morning; I will take you."
"I'm sure I'm agreeable," said Eliza.