I know what will happen when I have told my wife. She will look up and say, "That's right; you always do it."

And I shall say, "What do I always do?"

And she will answer, "You always get yourself cropped like a convict just when your hair was beginning to look nice."

And I shall say, "I can't help that; it's got to be done." And then I shall go and get it done.

But I wonder if my wife is right after all. There used to be a nice wave in my front hair, a wave into which you could lay two fingers. Is that there still? No, it's gone. In fact there is not sufficient front hair to make a wave with. It's odd how gradually these things happen. I could have sworn that I had that wave, and there is a photograph of me in the drawing-room with a fully-developed tidal bore; and I went on brushing my front hair and combing it and thinking of it all the time as constituting a wave, and lo it had vanished, leaving me under the impression that it was still there and accountable for the pleasing effect I produced in general society.

But if it wasn't the wave that produced this effect, what could it have been? My voice? Perhaps. My moustache? I doubt it. My teeth? Possibly. See advertisements of tooth powders passim. You know how it's done, in the before and after style. Before you use Dentoline you apparently do not possess so much as a front tooth. After you have used it once you are in possession of thirty-two regular and brilliant white teeth, and it seems plain that no dentist will ever make his fortune out of your mouth. All this, however, has nothing to do with getting my hair cut. But it brings me to an analogous consideration. When I tell my wife I am going to get my teeth attended to, does she try to restrain me from the fatal deed? Not she. She urges me to it, and leaves me no loophole for escape. She indulges in reminiscences of herself and the children defying pain in the dentist's chair, and heartens me with the statement that the instrument she likes best is the one that goes berr-r-r-r and makes you jump.

Let me now resume my commentary on hair-cutting. I wonder if I am sufficiently chatty with my hair-cutter. Most men talk to their hair-cutter all the time. They discuss politics and revolutions and Britain's unconquerable might, while I, having made a blundering start with the weather, am brought up with a round turn on the Bolsheviks and President WILSON'S manner of dealing with the situation. I cannot lay bare my inmost thoughts about the League of Nations while someone is running a miniature mowing-machine along the back of my neck ...

At this moment my wife entered the room.

"My dear," I said, "I am going to get my hair cut."

She gave me one mind-piercing look and said, "It's time you did. I've been noticing it for the last day or two."