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The Pen-Wiper She picked up the pen-wiper, looked at it, exclaimed "Ruined!" and then walked rapidly out of the room. I followed her, and asked what was the matter.

It appeared that the words, "Kindly clean the pen," meant that the pen was to be cleaned on a scrap of paper before the pen-wiper was used. Eliza said that I might have known that the pretty muslin was not intended to be a perfect mess of ink.

"Well," I said, "I didn't know. That's all there is to say about it."

But it was not, apparently, all that there was to say about it. In fact, the whole thing cast an unpleasant shade over the evening of my birthday. Finally I took a strong line, and refused to speak at all. 139