evening, as he had something important to say to her.

Marion was in a flutter. She admitted that she 'rather liked' George. (Your nice girl never says outright that she's keen on a man.) 'And what do you think,' she confessed, 'he said when we were playing draughts to-night that I was just the sort of girl his mother would like, and—and——'

'Yes, go on,' I said tensely.

'That he never believed in a man marrying a girl of whom his mother did not approve. What do you think he meant by that, dear?'

'Everything,' I said, and took a silent decision to leave no stone unturned to bring the thing off all right. I planned to leave them alone in the rose drawing-room with its pink-shaded lights—Marion looks her best under pink-shaded lights. She was thirty-seven, but only looked thirty when she had her hair waved and wore her grey charmeuse.

I, myself, prepared her for the interview. I dressed her hair becomingly and clasped my matrix necklace around her throat. Then, soon after George arrived, I excused myself on the plea of having an article to write—which was perfect truth—and left them alone together.

Doesn't it give you a feeling of contentment when you have done a good action? You are permeated with a sort of glow which comes from within. After closing the drawing-room door on Marion and George, I sat down to work in an atmosphere of righteousness. I could almost imagine there must be the beginnings of a faint luminous disc around my head.

The subject of the article I now began to write was 'Should Women Propose?' Treading carefully on the delicate ground of the Woman's Page, I decided that they must do nothing that is so utterly unfeminine. 'But there are many subtle little ways in which a woman can convey to a man her preference for him,' I penned, 'without for a moment overstepping the bounds of that maidenly reticence which is one of the charms of——'

The door opened and Elizabeth entered. Elizabeth has a way of entering when I am most likely to lose the thread of my sentence.

'I'm fair worried about Miss Marryun,' she began.

I looked up with a start. 'What on earth do you mean?'

'Well, you see, the Signs are against 'er. They've bin against 'er for days. Yesterday I see 'er sneeze three times to the left, an' that's bad. Then when she put her right shoe on 'er wrong foot by accident, I felt somethin' was comin'. But after I found two triangles an' a mouse in 'er cup to-day I knew——'