examine their marks. The anxiety of his hosts at these moments
resembled the solicitude of a cat whose newly born kittens are being

handed round for inspection.
"Let me see; did you give me back the mustard-pot? This is its

place here," piped Mrs. Peter.
"Sorry. I put it down by the claret-jug," said Wilfrid, busy with

another object.
"Oh, just let me have the sugar-sifter again," asked Mrs. Peter,

dogged determination showing through her nervousness; "I must label
it who it comes from before I forget."

Vigilance was not completely crowned with a sense of victory. After
they had said "Good-night" to their visitor, Mrs. Peter expressed

her conviction that he had taken something.
"I fancy, by his manner, that there was something up," corroborated

her husband; "do you miss anything?"
Mrs. Peters hastily counted the array of gifts.

"I can only make it thirty-four, and I think it should be thirty-
five," she announced; "I can't remember if thirty-five includes the

Archdeacon's cruet-stand that hasn't arrived yet."
"How on earth are we to know?" said Peter. "The mean pig hasn't

brought us a present, and I'm hanged if he shall carry one off."
"To-morrow, when's he having his bath," said Mrs. Peter excitedly,

"he's sure to leave his keys somewhere, and we can go through his
portmanteau. It's the only thing to do."

On the morrow an alert watch was kept by the conspirators behind
half-closed doors, and when Wilfrid, clad in a gorgeous bath-robe,

had made his way to the bath-room, there was a swift and furtive
rush by two excited individuals towards the principal guest-chamber.

Mrs. Peter kept guard outside, while her husband first made a
hurried and successful search for the keys, and then plunged at the

portmanteau with the air of a disagreeably conscientious Customs
official. The quest was a brief one; a silver cream jug lay

embedded in the folds of some zephyr shirts.
"The cunning brute," said Mrs. Peters; "he took a cream jug because

there were so many; he thought one wouldn't be missed. Quick, fly
down with it and put it back among the others."

Wilfrid was late in coming down to breakfast, and his manner showed
plainly that something was amiss.

"It's an unpleasant thing to have to say," he blurted out presently,
"but I'm afraid you must have a thief among your servants.

Something's been taken out of my portmanteau. It was a little
present from my mother and myself for your silver wedding. I should

have given it to you last night after dinner, only it happened to be
a cream jug, and you seemed annoyed at having so many duplicates, so

I felt rather awkward about giving you another. I thought I'd get
it changed for something else, and now it's gone."

"Did you say it was from your MOTHER and yourself?" asked Mr. and
Mrs. Peter almost in unison. The Snatcher had been an orphan these

many years.
"Yes, my mother's at Cairo just now, and she wrote to me at Dresden

to try and get you something quaint and pretty in the old silver
line, and I pitched on this cream jug."

Both the Pigeoncotes had turned deadly pale. The mention of Dresden
had thrown a sudden light on the situation. It was Wilfrid the

Attache, a very superior young man, who rarely came within their
social horizon, whom they had been entertaining unawares in the

supposed character of Wilfrid the Snatcher. Lady Ernestine
Pigeoncote, his mother, moved in circles which were entirely beyond

their compass or ambitions, and the son would probably one day be an
Ambassador. And they had rifled and despoiled his portmanteau!

Husband and wife looked blankly and desperately" target="_blank" title="ad.绝望地；拼命地">desperately at one another. It
was Mrs. Peter who arrived first at an inspiration.

"How dreadful to think there are thieves in the house! We keep the
drawing-room locked up at night, of course, but anything might be

carried off while we are at breakfast."
She rose and went out hurriedly, as though to assure herself that

the drawing-room was not being stripped of its silverware, and
returned a moment later, bearing a cream jug in her hands.

"There are eight cream jugs now, instead of seven," she cried; "this
one wasn't there before. What a curious trick of memory, Mr.

Wilfrid! You must have slipped downstairs with it last night and
put it there before we locked up, and forgotten all about having

done it in the morning."
"One's mind often plays one little tricks like that," said Mr.

Peter, with desperate heartiness. "Only the other day I went into
the town to pay a bill, and went in again next day, having clean

forgotten that I'd--"
"It is certainly the jug I bought for you," said Wilfrid, looking

closely at it; "it was in my portmanteau when I got my bath-robe out
this morning, before going to my bath, and it was not there when I

unlocked the portmanteau on my return. Some one had taken it while
I was away from the room."

The Pigeoncotes had turned paler than ever. Mrs. Peter had a final
inspiration.

"Get me my smelling-salts, dear," she said to her husband; "I think
they're in the dressing-room."

Peter dashed out of the room with glad relief; he had lived so long
during the last few minutes that a golden wedding seemed within

measurable distance.
Mrs. Peter turned to her guest with confidential coyness.

"A diplomat like you will know how to treat this as if it hadn't
happened. Peter's little weakness; it runs in the family."

"Good Lord! Do you mean to say he's a kleptomaniac, like Cousin
Snatcher?"

"Oh, not exactly," said Mrs. Peter, anxious to whitewash her husband
a little greyer than she was painting him. "He would never touch

anything he found lying about, but he can't resist making a raid on
things that are locked up. The doctors have a special name for it.

He must have pounced on your portmanteau the moment you went to your
bath, and taken the first thing he came across. Of course, he had

no motive for taking a cream jug; we've already got seven, as you
know--not, of course, that we don't value the kind of gift you and

your mother--hush here's Peter coming."
Mrs. Peter broke off in some confusion, and tripped out to meet her

husband in the hall.
"It's all right," she whispered to him; "I've explained everything.

Don't say anything more about it."
"Brave little woman," said Peter, with a gasp of relief; "I could

never have done it."
* * *

Diplomatic reticence does not necessarily extend to family affairs.
Peter Pigeoncote was never able to understand why Mrs. Consuelo van

Bullyon, who stayed with them in the spring, always carried two very
obvious jewel-cases with her to the bath-room, explaining them to

any one she chanced to meet in the corridor as her manicure and
face-massage set.

THE OCCASIONAL GARDEN
"Don't talk to me about town gardens," said Elinor Rapsley; "which

means, of course, that I want you to listen to me for an hour or so
while I talk about nothing else. 'What a nice-sized garden you've

got,' people said to us when we first moved here. What I suppose
they meant to say was what a nice-sized site for a garden we'd got.

As a matter of fact, the size is all against it; it's too large to
be ignored altogether and treated as a yard, and it's too small to

keep giraffes in. You see, if we could keep giraffes or reindeer or
some other species of browsing animal there we could explain the

general absence of vegetation by a reference to the fauna of the
garden: 'You can't have wapiti AND Darwin tulips, you know, so we

didn't put down any bulbs last year.' As it is, we haven't got the
wapiti, and the Darwin tulips haven't survived the fact that most of