"At nine! I am sure that Mrs. Beeton was always up at six."

"I have my doubts about Mrs. B. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I should not be very much surprised to learn that she had breakfast in bed every morning."

"O Frank! You have no reverence for anything." "Let us have some more wisdom."

"Frugality and Economy are home virtues without which no household can prosper. Dr. Johnson says, "Frugality may be termed-"? Oh, bother Dr. Johnson! Who cares for a man's opinion. Now, if it had been Mrs. Johnson-—!”

"Johnson kept house for himself for years-and a queer job he made of it.”

"So I should think." "Mrs. Beeton is all right,

Maude tossed her pretty curls.

but I will not be lectured by Dr. Johnson. Where was I? Oh yes-'We must always remember that to manage a little well, is a great merit in housekeeping.""

"Hurrah! Down with the second vegetable! No pudding on fish days. Vive la bière de Pilsen!"

"What a noisy boy you are!"

"This book excites me. Anything more?"

"Friendships should not be hastily formed, nor the heart given at once to every newcomer

"Well, I should hope not! Don't let me catch you at it! You don't mind my cigarette? Has Mrs. Beeton a paragraph about smoking in bedrooms?"

"Such an enormity never occurred to her as a remote possibility. If she had known you, dear, she would have had to write an appendix to her book to meet all the new problems which you would suggest. go on?"

"Please do!"

Shall I

"She next treats conversation. 'In conversation, trifling occurrences such as small disappointments, petty annoyances, and other everyday incidents, should never be mentioned to friends. If the mistress be a wife, never let a word in connection with her husband's failings pass her lips--""

"By Jove, this book has more wisdom to the square inch than any work of man,” cried Frank, in enthusiasm. "I thought that would please you. 'Good temper should be cultivated by every mistress, as upon it the welfare of the household may be said to turn.""

"Excellent!"

"In starting a household, it is always best in the long run to get the very best articles of their kind.""

"That is why I got you, Maude.”

"Thank-you, sir. We have a dissertation then upon dress and fashion, another upon engaging domestics, another about daily duties, another about visiting, another about fresh air and exercise--"

"The most essential of any," cried Frank, jumping up, and pulling his wife by the arms out of her low wicker-chair. "There is just time for nine holes at golf before it is dark, if you will come exactly as you are.

But listen to this, young lady. If ever again I see you fretting or troubling yourself about your household affairs

"No, no, Frank, I won't!"

"Well, if you do, Mrs. Beeton goes into the kitchen fire. Now remember!"

"You are sure you don't envy Mr. Beeton?"

"I don't envy a man upon earth."

"Then why should I try to be Mrs. Beeton?”
"Why indeed!"

"O Frank, what a load off my mind! Those sixteen hundred pages have just lain upon it for months. Dear old boy! come on!"

And they clattered downstairs for their golf-clubs.

MR. SAMUEL PEPYS.

THERE were few things which Maude liked so much as a long winter evening when Frank and she dined together, and then sat beside the fire and made good cheer. It would be an exaggeration to say that she preferred it to a dance, but next to that supreme joy, and higher even than the theatre in her scale of pleasures, were those serene and intimate evenings when they talked at their will, and were silent at their will, with their home brightened by those little jokes and endearments and allusions which make up that inner domestic masonry which is close-tiled for ever to the

outsider. Five or six evenings a week, she with her sewing and Frank with his book, settled down to such enjoyment as men go to the ends of the earth to seek, while it awaits them, if they will but atune their souls to sympathy, beside their own hearthstones. Now and again their sweet calm would be broken by a ring at the bell, when some friend of Frank's would come round to pay them an evening visit. At the sound Maude would say "bother," and Frank something shorter and stronger, but, as the intruder appeared, they would both break into, "Well, really now it was good of you to drop in upon us in this homely way." Without such hypocrisy, the world would be a hard place to live in. I may have mentioned somewhere that Frank had a catholic taste in literature. Upon a shelf in their bedroom—a relic of his bachelor days-there stood a small line of his intimate books, the books which filled all the chinks of his life when no new books were forthcoming. They were all volumes which he had read in his youth, and many times since, until they had become the very tie-beams of his mind. His tastes were healthy and obvious without being fine. Macaulay's Essays, Holmes' Autocrat, Gibbons' History, Jefferies' Story of my Heart, Carlyle's Life, Pepys' Diary, and Borrow's Lavengro were among his inner circle of literary friends. The sturdy East Anglian, half prize-fighter, half missionary, was a particular favourite of his, and so was the garrulous Secretary of the Navy. One day it struck him that it would be a pleasant thing to induce his wife to

A Duet,

10

share his enthusiasms, and he suggested that the evenings should be spent in reading selections from these old friends of his. Maude was delighted. If he had proposed to read the rig-vedas in the original Sanskrit, Maude would have listened with a smiling face. It is in such trifles that a woman's love is more than a man's. That night Frank came downstairs with a thick wellthumbed volume in his hand.

"This is Mr. Pepys," said he solemnly.

"What a funny name!" cried Maude. "It makes me think of indigestion. Why? Oh yes, pepsine, of course."

"We shall take a dose of him every night after dinner to complete the resemblance. But seriously, dear, I think that now that we have taken up a course of reading, we should try to approach it in a grave spirit, and endeavour to realise-- Oh, I say, don't!"

"I am so sorry, dear! I do hope I didn't hurt you!" "You did-considerably."

"It all came from my having the needle in my hand at the time—and you looked so solemn-and-well, I couldn't help it."

"No, dear; Jemima may come in any moment with the coffee. Now, do sit down and read about Mr. Pepys to me. And first of all, would you mind explaining ali about the gentleman, from the beginning, and taking nothing for granted, just as if I had never heard of him before."