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 it. So I could only possess my soul in patience, in the hope that some overt act of meddling, or some flagrant offer of gratuitous and unsolicited advice, would enable me to resent her behaviour in a firm and final manner.

It would be an easy matter to follow out a premeditated course of action if only the party of the second part would remain passive, or, better yet, make the moves which one expects. But that is exactly what never happens — otherwise I should have won many a game of checkers, both actual and metaphorical, in which I have come out second-best. Now, for example, just as I was preparing to administer a deserved rebuke to Miss Berrith, she jumped three of my men, as it were, by inviting me to tea. I accepted and went, with a dim idea that this would afford me the opening I had been seeking. I was never more mistaken in my life.

Afternoon tea is a thing of which, in ordinary, I have a profound distrust. Applied