HULLO, BEDROOM SCENE!
When Elizabeth presented me with my first safety razor we were both extremely hopeful about the future. She, fresh from the influence of a chemist's assistant, was convinced that breakfast would receive my attentions at more nearly its official hour; while I, reading folded eulogies that had nestled mid the dismembered parts of the razor itself, was looking forward to quite ten minutes extra in bed each morning.
Incidentally we were both disappointed.
For some time everything went well. And then the disused razor blades began to collect!
Now, one of the duties of our seventh housemaid (the seventh this year) was to light gas and things in the bedrooms when it became dark. And one evening, when she was groping about with her hands and snatching at things on the dressing-table in the hope of finding matches, she clutched a group of discarded razor-blades by mistake, strewed them and her blood over Elizabeth's best blue carpet, and gave notice the next morning.
"Now, what is to be done?" said Elizabeth next day as she sat on the floor and massaged the blue Axminster. "No housemaid, and a bedroom carpet disguised as a third-rate murder clue."
"Either get a red carpet, or apply for your next housemaid to a Society for Destitute Aristocrats, blue blood guaranteed," I suggested.
Elizabeth left off massaging and gazed searchingly at the murder clue.
"All because you didn't throw away those wretched razor blades," she said. "Hughie, I hate you! Throw them away at once!"
"Unhate me first," I stipulated.