one of his favourite remarks, you know. They land at Manchester in
the dead of the night, and a Jacobite conspirator gives them the

keys of the fortress."
Peeping in through the doorway Harvey observed that the municipal

dustbin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of
imaginary cannon, and now represented the principal fortified

position in Manchester; John Stuart Mill had been dipped in red ink,
and apparently stood for Marshal Saxe.

"Louis orders his troops to surround the Young Women's Christian
Association and seize the lot of them. 'Once back at the Louvre and

the girls are mine,' he exclaims. We must use Mrs. Hemans again for
one of the girls; she says 'Never,' and stabs Marshal Saxe to the

heart."
"He bleeds dreadfully," exclaimed Bertie, splashing red ink

liberally over the facade of the Association building.
"The soldiers rush in and avenge his death with the utmost savagery.

A hundred girls are killed"--here Bertie emptied the remainder of
the red ink over the devoted building--"and the surviving five

hundred are dragged off to the French ships. 'I have lost a
Marshal,' says Louis, 'but I do not go back empty-handed.'"

Harvey stole away from the room, and sought out his sister.
"Eleanor," he said, "the experiment--"

"Yes?"
"Has failed. We have begun too late."

LOUISE
"The tea will be quite cold, you'd better ring for some more," said

the Dowager Lady Beanford.
Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with

imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis
Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the

Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her
sister, Jane Thropplestance, who was some years her junior, was

chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in
Middlesex.

"I've really been unusually" target="_blank" title="ad.异常地；非常">unusually clever this afternoon," she remarked
gaily, as she rang for the tea. "I've called on all the people I

meant to call on; and I've done all the shopping that I set out to
do. I even remembered to try and match that silk for you at

Harrod's, but I'd forgotten to bring the pattern with me, so it was
no use. I really think that was the only important thing I forgot

during the whole afternoon. Quite wonderful for me, isn't it?"
"What have you done with Louise?" asked her sister. "Didn't you

take her out with you? You said you were going to."
"Good gracious," exclaimed Jane, "what have I done with Louise? I

must have left her somewhere."
"But where?"

"That's just it. Where have I left her? I can't remember if the
Carrywoods were at home or if I just left cards. If there were at

home I may have left Louise there to play bridge. I'll go and
telephone to Lord Carrywood and find out."

"Is that you, Lord Carrywood?" she queried over the telephone; "it's
me, Jane Thropplestance. I want to know, have you seen Louise?"

"'Louise,'" came the answer, "it's been my fate to see it three
times. At first, I must admit, I wasn't impressed by it, but the

music grows on one after a bit. Still, I don't think I want to see
it again just at present. Were you going to offer me a seat in your

box?"
"Not the opera 'Louise'--my niece, Louise Thropplestance. I thought

I might have left her at your house."
"You left cards on us this afternoon, I understand, but I don't

think you left a niece. The footman would have been sure to have
mentioned it if you had. Is it going to be a fashion to leave

nieces on people as well as cards? I hope not; some of these houses
in Berkeley-square have practically no accommodation for that sort

of thing."
"She's not at the Carrywoods'," announced Jane, returning to her

tea; "now I come to think of it, perhaps I left her at the silk
counter at Selfridge's. I may have told her to wait there a moment

while I went to look at the silks in a better light, and I may
easily have forgotten about her when I found I hadn't your pattern

with me. In that case she's still sitting there. She wouldn't move
unless she was told to; Louise has no initiative."

"You said you tried to match the silk at Harrod's," interjected the
dowager.

"Did I? Perhaps it was Harrod's. I really don't remember. It was
one of those places where every one is so kind and sympathetic and

devoted that one almost hates to take even a reel of cotton away
from such pleasant surroundings."

"I think you might have taken Louise away. I don't like the idea of
her being there among a lot of strangers. Supposing some

unprincipled person was to get into conversation with her."
"Impossible. Louise has no conversation. I've never discovered a

single topic on which she'd anything to say beyond 'Do you think so?
I dare say you're right.' I really thought her reticence about the

fall of the Ribot Ministry was ridiculous, considering how much her
dear mother used to visit Paris. This bread and butter is cut far

too thin; it crumbles away long before you can get it to your mouth.
One feels so absurd, snapping at one's food in mid-air, like a trout

leaping at may-fly."
"I am rather surprised," said the dowager, "that you can sit there

making a hearty tea when you've just lost a favourite niece."
"You talk as if I'd lost her in a churchyard sense, instead of

having temporarily mislaid her. I'm sure to remember presently
where I left her."

"You didn't visit any place of devotion, did you? If you've left
her mooning about Westminster Abbey or St. Peter's, Eaton Square,

without being able to give any satisfactory reason why she's there,
she'll be seized under the Cat and Mouse Act and sent to Reginald

McKenna."
"That would be extremely awkward," said Jane, meeting an irresolute

piece of bread and butter halfway; "we hardly know the McKennas, and
it would be very tiresome having to telephone to some unsympathetic

private secretary, describing Louise to him and asking to have her
sent back in time for dinner. Fortunately, I didn't go to any place

of devotion, though I did get mixed up with a Salvation Army
procession. It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with

them, they're so absolutely different to what they used to be when I
first remember them in the 'eighties. They used to go about then

unkempt and dishevelled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world,
and now they're spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like

a geranium bed with religious convictions. Laura Kettleway was
going on about them in the lift of the Dover Street Tube the other

day, saying what a lot of good work they did, and what a loss it
would have been if they'd never existed. 'If they had never

existed,' I said, 'Granville Barker would have been certain to have
invented something that looked exactly like them.' If you say

things like that, quite loud, in a Tube lift, they always sound like
epigrams."

"I think you ought to do something about Louise," said the dowager.
"I'm trying to think whether she was with me when I called on Ada

Spelvexit. I rather enjoyed myself there. Ada was trying, as
usual, to ram that odious Koriatoffski woman down my throat, knowing

perfectly well that I detest her, and in an unguarded moment she
said: 'She's leaving her present house and going to Lower Seymour

Street.' 'I dare say she will, if she stays there long enough,' I
said. Ada didn't see it for about three minutes, and then she was