I cannot for the life of me conceive why I thought this would be a suitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady was so young, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine that it seemed impossible that any man in the world should not love her. But however that might be I bought her, and carrying her home in a cab, I set her on my husband's desk without a word, and then stood by, like the mother of Moses, to watch the result.
There was no result—at first at all events. My husband was several hours in the room with my treasure without appearing to be aware of its presence. But towards evening his two principal friends came to play bridge with him, and then, from the ambush of my own apartments, I heard the screechy voice of Mr. Vivian saying:
"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a Pape?"
"Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's my wife's little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest to make me a 'vert.'"
My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly more successful.
Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely without a rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room with them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early, before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to Covent Garden, through the empty and echoing streets, while the air of London was fresh with the breath of morning and the big city within its high-built walls seemed to dream of the green fields beyond.
I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were rolling in from the country with huge crates of red and white roses, bright with the sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then buying the largest and loveliest and costliest bunch of them (a great armful, as much as I could hold), I hurried back to the hotel and set them in vases and glasses in every part of my husband's room—his desk, his sideboard, his mantelpiece, and above all his table, which a waiter was laying for breakfast—until the whole place was like a bridal bower.
"Ah, this is something like," I heard my husband say as he came out of his bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious terrier at his heels.
I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while drawing on his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter, who was clearing the table,
"Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming flowers with which she has decorated my room this morning."