"It's Miss Betty's wedding to-morrow. I suppose I've got a morning coat and a top hat."
"You have a morning coat, sir," said Marigold. "But your last silk hat you gave to Miss Althea, sir, to make a work-bag out of the outside."
"So I did," said I.
It was an unpleasant reminiscence. A hat is about as symbolical a garment as you may be pleased to imagine. I wanted to wear at the live Betty's wedding the ceremonious thing which I had given, for purposes of vanity, to the dead Althea. I was cross with Marigold.
"Why did you let me do such a silly thing? You might have known that I should want it some day or other. Why didn't you foresee such a contingency?"
"Why," asked Marigold woodenly, "didn't you or I, sir, or many wiser than us, foresee the war?"
"Because we were all damned fools," said I.
Marigold approached my chair with his great inexorable tentacles of arms. It was bed time.
"I'm sorry about the hat, sir," said he.