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 excursion steamer in the act of passing a battleship or a boat-race. It would be impossible for me to compute the amount of time which I expended daily in restoring the laws of proportion and equilibrium which Galvin had knocked into a cocked hat.

Then there were rats in the cellar; and if a rat, either alive or dead, had been a dynamite bomb on the point of exploding, Galvin could not have displayed less eagerness to deal with it upon terms of intimacy. Therefore, if Darius did not happen to be at hand, it fell to me to rebait the trap and make decent disposal of the remains — a pretty occupation for a single gentleman not minded to be troubled with sordid details! I am fond of flowers, and, since my garden had proved as unproductive as the Phœnix, the local florist delivered semi-weekly a generous assortment at my door. But there is an art in arranging flowers, an art in which I was imperfect and Galvin utterly deficient. My