"What we want," said Harris, "is a change." At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris put her head in to say that Ethelbertha had sent her to remind me that we must not be late getting home because of Clarence. Ethelbertha, I am inclined to think, is unnecessarily nervous about the children.

Ce qu'il nous faudrait, dit Harris, ce serait un peu de distraction. A ce moment la porte s'ouvrit, et Mme Harris, passant la tete dans l'entre-baillement, nous dit qu'Ethelbertha l'envoyait me rappeler qu'il ne fallait pas rentrer trop tard a cause de Clarence..."

(Mrs. Elizabeth Spender sits near the fire, reading a book. She is a tall, thin woman, with passionate eyes, set in an oval face of olive complexion; the features are regular and severe; her massive dark hair is almost primly arranged. She wears a tailor-made costume, surmounted by a plain black hat. The door opens and Phoebe enters, shown in by Hake, the butler, a thin, ascetic-looking man of about thirty, with prematurely grey hair. Phoebe Mogton is of the Fluffy Ruffles type, petite, with a retrousse nose, remarkably bright eyes, and a quantity of fluffy light hair, somewhat untidily...

Once upon a time in Zandam, which is by the Zuider Zee, there lived a wicked man named Nicholas Snyders. He was mean and hard and cruel, and loved but one thing in the world, and that was gold. And even that not for its own sake. He loved the power gold gave him-the power to tyrannize and to oppress, the power to cause suffering at his will.

They look so dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with bright eyes out on the world, and stretching forth soft little leaves toward the coming gladness of their lives. They stand apart, so cold and hard amid the stirring hope and joy that are throbbing all around them.

"I do mean it," declared Mrs. Korner, "I like a man to be a man." "But you would not like Christopher-I mean Mr. Korner-to be that sort of man," suggested her bosom friend.

The Doctor never did believe this story, but claims for it that, to a great extent, it has altered his whole outlook on life. "Of course, what actually happened-what took place under my own nose," continued the Doctor, "I do not dispute. And then there is the case of Mrs. Marigold. That was unfortunate, I admit, and still is, especially for Marigold. But, standing by itself, it proves nothing.

Perhaps of all, it troubled most the Herr Pfarrer. Was he not the father of the village? And as such did it not fall to him to see his children marry well and suitably? marry in any case. It was the duty of every worthy citizen to keep alive throughout the ages the sacred hearth fire, to rear up sturdy lads and honest lassies that would serve God, and the Fatherland. A true son of Saxon soil was the Herr Pastor Winckelmann-kindly, simple, sentimental.

This is the story, among others, of Henry the waiter-or, as he now prefers to call himself, Henri-told to me in the long dining-room of the Riffel Alp Hotel, where I once stayed for a melancholy week "between seasons," sharing the echoing emptiness of the place with two maiden ladies, who talked all day to one another in frightened whispers. Henry's construction I have discarded for its amateurishness; his method being generally to commence a story at the end, and then, working backwards to the beginning, wind up with the middle.

"It is not a large house," I said. "We don't want a large house. Two spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked there on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a bachelor, will be all we shall require-at all events, for the present. Later on, if I ever get rich, we can throw out a wing. The kitchen I shall have to break to your mother gently. Whatever the original architect could have been thinking of-"