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372 speaking with voluble rapidity, "I'm in trouble again."

"The last girl?"

"The last girl. Before I can get a cook, my hard won housemaid"—she paused—"chucks it."

"Panic?" asked young Walshingham.

"Mysterious grief! Everything merry as a marriage bell until my Anagram Tea! Then in the evening a portentous rigour of bearing, a word or so from my Aunt, and immediately—Floods of Tears and Notice!" For a moment her eye rested thoughtfully on Kipps, as she said: "Is there anything heartrending about Anagrams?"

"I find them so," said Revel. "I"

But Mrs. Bindon Botting got away again. "For a time it made me quite uneasy"

Kipps jabbed his lip with his fork rather painfully, and was recalled from a fascinated glare at Mrs. Botting to the immediate facts of dinner.

"whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic's Moral Code—you never can tell. We made enquiries. No. No. No. She must go and that's all!"

"One perceives," said Revel, "in these disorders, dimly and distantly, the last dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs. Botting, let us at least try to suppose—it is Love."

Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.

"It's love," said Mrs. Botting; "what else can it be? Beneath the orderly humdrum of our lives these