Then I came upon a large quantity of boxes of fusees, all partly empty. How it happens is this: I go to play golf on a windy day, and, of course, have to buy at the club-house a box of fusees. These, on my return, or what remains of them, I methodically put in a drawer on reaching home. By an oversight I forget to take them out again when I play next day, and so buy another box, which I similarly place in a drawer. And if you play golf four or five times a week on these downs, where there is almost always a high wind, it follows that in the course of a year the amount of partly filled boxes of fusees which you collect about you is nothing short of prodigious. I did not know how great a supporter I was of home industries.
My methodical mind saw at once how these had to be treated. Of course, throwing them all away was out of the question, and the right thing to do was to produce out of every dozen of partly filled boxes some eight or nine completely full. This plan I began to put into practice at once.
It was necessary, of course, to find how many matches a full fusee-box contained, but they are awkward to pack, and some seemed to hold ten and others only seven; so when Helen came back, the table was covered, among other things, with fusees. So I waved my arms violently, and said: ‘You shall not!’ This was because the female nose, and the male nose if it is unaccustomed to tobacco-smoke, likes, positively likes, the smell of fusees; but to anyone who smokes tobacco the smell of them is, for some reason, perfectly nauseating, and that is why we only use them in the open air.
Then Helen’s mean nature asserted itself. She said, ‘Oh, I forgot you don’t like the smell,’ and soon after (not at once, mark you) called my attention to some non-existent object of horticultural interest out of the window. I turned, and in a moment she had lit a fusee, and positively inhaled the sickening perfume of it. I only wished she had inhaled it all.
The upshot was that we took a turn on the lawn, while the room with open door and windows recovered from its degrading odour.
‘How were you getting on?’ she asked.
‘Not very well. I decided to destroy some string. I nearly destroyed a pill-box with some cedar-flower dust in it. But I reserved that. At least, I think I did.’
‘Why?’
‘Legs and I collected it, and I know Legs wouldn’t have thrown it away, so I can’t.’
Helen was silent a moment; then,