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 furniture. "I always thought that in Paris, if they couldn't do anything else, they could arrange a table. I don't like that at all—those horrid little dishes on each side! Don't you think those things ought to be off the table, Mr. Longueville? I don't like to see a lot of things I am not eating. And I told them to have some flowers—pray, where are the flowers? Do they call those things flowers? They look as if they had come out of the landlady's bonnet! Mr. Longueville, do look at those objects."

"They are not like me—they are not very fresh," laughed Bernard.

"It's no great matter—we have not got to eat them," growled Captain Lovelock.

"I should think you would expect to—with the luncheon you usually make!" rejoined Blanche. "Since you are here, though I didn't ask you, you might as well make yourself useful. Will you be so good as to ring the bell? If Gordon expects that we are going to wait another quarter of an hour for him, he exaggerates the patience of a long-suffering wife. If you are very curious to know what he is about, he is writing letters, by way of a change. He writes about eighty a day; his correspondents must be strong people! It's a lucky thing for me that I am married to Gordon; if I were not, he might write to me—to me, to whom it's a misery to have to answer even an invitation to dinner! To begin with, I don't know how to spell. If Captain Lovelock ever boasts that he has had letters from me, you may know it's an invention. He has never had anything but telegrams—three telegrams that I sent him in America about a pair of slippers that he had left at our house and that I didn't know what to do with. Captain Lovelock's slippers are no trifle to have on one's hands—on one's feet, I suppose I ought to say. For telegrams the spelling doesn't 203