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 method was to put them together loosely, so they should loll negligently from the vase. This, as I found, causes the whole affair to fall prone upon the table the moment you loose your hold of it. Galvin’s system, on the contrary, was that more commonly employed in baling cotton or tying up asparagus. When she had finished, the flowers were so inseparably welded together, and so firmly wedged into the vase, that it seemed incredible that the result could have been arrived at without the aid of a hydraulic press.

Then there was always the eternal question of the culinary operations. I was asked, for example, if I would have noodles in my consommé. A noodle, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is a kind of silly, half-witted fellow, and by what process of reasoning it should appear appropriate to serve him in a soup it was beyond my power to understand. I agreed to the suggestion; but Galvin evidently changed her mind, because nothing