stant she will—I shall never know it. Pollyooly is very intelligent," said the Honorable John Ruffin flippantly. "At any rate she is not a perpetual torture to my olfactory nerve. She doesn't smell like an Indian village at Earl's Court."
"I attach far more importance to honesty," said Mr. Gedge-Tomkins even more ponderously.
"I hope you've got it," said the Honorable John Ruffin in a tone of considerable doubt. Then he added warmly, "Why, hang it all! If Pollyooly hadn't tried to keep her little brother out of the workhouse by concealing the fact that a blackguardly road-hog had run over her unfortunate aunt, I should have thought very poorly of her indeed."
"Ah, you're one of our unmoral aristocracy," said Mr. Gedge-Tomkins in a tone of sad indulgence. "I'm a plain Englishman."
"And you've got a plain Englishwoman—a devilish plain Englishwoman—for housekeeper. So if you're not happy, you ought to be," said the Honorable John Ruffin in the tone of one closing a discussion.
But though he had so firmly deprecated the re-
