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 There was cotton in his ears. Any resolute woman, she reflected sagely, even without children to help her, can drill a man into insensibility.

George allowed the bath water to splash noisily while he cleaned his teeth, but he always turned off the tap while shaving. He shaved by ear as much as by sight or touch. Unless he could hear the crackling stroke of the razor blade he was not satisfied that it was cutting properly.

"How soon do you think the Pony will come?" Janet had asked him as he came upstairs. The children had found some deceptive promotion scheme advertised in a cheap magazine of Nounou's. The notice had led them to believe that if they solved a very transparent puzzle they would easily win the First Prize, a Shetland pony. They had answered the puzzle and now were waiting daily to hear the patter of hoofs up the lane. To George's dismay he had found that they took this very seriously. They had swept out an old stall in the stable and ravished a blanket from Rose's bed to keep Prince (whose name and photograph had appeared in the advertisement) from being cold at night. He had tried, gently, to caution them, explaining that the original puzzle had only been preliminary lure for some subscription-getting