Bab Bab 9 · THE BURGLAR’S BRIDE

. THE BURGLAR’S BRIDE

The morning after the adventure of the Persian cats, the musk-rats, the

common cow, and the uncommon burglar, all the children slept till it was

ten o’clock; and then it was only Cyril who woke; but he attended to

the others, so that by half past ten every one was ready to help to get

breakfast. It was shivery cold, and there was but little in the house

that was really worth eating.

Robert had arranged a thoughtful little surprise for the absent

servants. He had made a neat and delightful booby trap over the kitchen

door, and as soon as they heard the front door click open and knew the

servants had come back, all four children hid in the cupboard under

the stairs and listened with delight to the entrance--the tumble, the

splash, the scuffle, and the remarks of the servants. They heard the

cook say it was a judgement on them for leaving the place to itself;

she seemed to think that a booby trap was a kind of plant that was quite

likely to grow, all by itself, in a dwelling that was left shut up. But

the housemaid, more acute, judged that someone must have been in the

house--a view confirmed by the sight of the breakfast things on the

nursery table.

The cupboard under the stairs was very tight and paraffiny, however, and

a silent struggle for a place on top ended in the door bursting open

and discharging Jane, who rolled like a football to the feet of the

servants.

‘Now,’ said Cyril, firmly, when the cook’s hysterics had become quieter,

and the housemaid had time to say what she thought of them, ‘don’t you

begin jawing us. We aren’t going to stand it. We know too much. You’ll

please make an extra special treacle roley for dinner, and we’ll have a

tinned tongue.’

‘I daresay,’ said the housemaid, indignant, still in her outdoor things

and with her hat very much on one side. ‘Don’t you come a-threatening

me, Master Cyril, because I won’t stand it, so I tell you. You tell

your ma about us being out? Much I care! She’ll be sorry for me when she

hears about my dear great-aunt by marriage as brought me up from a child

and was a mother to me. She sent for me, she did, she wasn’t expected

to last the night, from the spasms going to her legs--and cook was that

kind and careful she couldn’t let me go alone, so--’

‘Don’t,’ said Anthea, in real distress. ‘You know where liars go to,

Eliza--at least if you don’t--’

‘Liars indeed!’ said Eliza, ‘I won’t demean myself talking to you.’

‘How’s Mrs Wigson?’ said Robert, ‘and DID you keep it up last night?’

The mouth of the housemaid fell open.

‘Did you doss with Maria or Emily?’ asked Cyril.

‘How did Mrs Prosser enjoy herself?’ asked Jane.

‘Forbear,’ said Cyril, ‘they’ve had enough. Whether we tell or not

depends on your later life,’ he went on, addressing the servants. ‘If

you are decent to us we’ll be decent to you. You’d better make that

treacle roley--and if I were you, Eliza, I’d do a little housework and

cleaning, just for a change.’

The servants gave in once and for all.

‘There’s nothing like firmness,’ Cyril went on, when the breakfast

things were cleared away and the children were alone in the nursery.

‘People are always talking of difficulties with servants. It’s quite

simple, when you know the way. We can do what we like now and they won’t

peach. I think we’ve broken THEIR proud spirit. Let’s go somewhere by

carpet.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said the Phoenix, yawning, as it swooped

down from its roost on the curtain pole. ‘I’ve given you one or two

hints, but now concealment is at an end, and I see I must speak out.’

It perched on the back of a chair and swayed to and fro, like a parrot

on a swing.

‘What’s the matter now?’ said Anthea. She was not quite so gentle as

usual, because she was still weary from the excitement of last night’s

cats. ‘I’m tired of things happening. I shan’t go anywhere on the

carpet. I’m going to darn my stockings.’

‘Darn!’ said the Phoenix, ‘darn! From those young lips these strange

expressions--’

‘Mend, then,’ said Anthea, ‘with a needle and wool.’

The Phoenix opened and shut its wings thoughtfully.

‘Your stockings,’ it said, ‘are much less important than they now appear

to you. But the carpet--look at the bare worn patches, look at the great

rent at yonder corner. The carpet has been your faithful friend--your

willing servant. How have you requited its devoted service?’

‘Dear Phoenix,’ Anthea urged, ‘don’t talk in that horrid lecturing tone.

You make me feel as if I’d done something wrong. And really it is a

wishing carpet, and we haven’t done anything else to it--only wishes.’

‘Only wishes,’ repeated the Phoenix, ruffling its neck feathers angrily,

‘and what sort of wishes? Wishing people to be in a good temper, for

instance. What carpet did you ever hear of that had such a wish asked

of it? But this noble fabric, on which you trample so recklessly’ (every

one removed its boots from the carpet and stood on the linoleum), ‘this

carpet never flinched. It did what you asked, but the wear and tear must

have been awful. And then last night--I don’t blame you about the cats

and the rats, for those were its own choice; but what carpet could stand

a heavy cow hanging on to it at one corner?’

‘I should think the cats and rats were worse,’ said Robert, ‘look at all

their claws.’

‘Yes,’ said the bird, ‘eleven thousand nine hundred and forty of them--I

daresay you noticed? I should be surprised if these had not left their

mark.’

‘Good gracious,’ said Jane, sitting down suddenly on the floor, and

patting the edge of the carpet softly; ‘do you mean it’s WEARING OUT?’

‘Its life with you has not been a luxurious one,’ said the Phoenix.

‘French mud twice. Sand of sunny shores twice. Soaking in southern seas

once. India once. Goodness knows where in Persia once. Musk-rat-land

once. And once, wherever the cow came from. Hold your carpet up to the

light, and with cautious tenderness, if YOU please.’

With cautious tenderness the boys held the carpet up to the light; the

girls looked, and a shiver of regret ran through them as they saw how

those eleven thoousand nine hundred and forty claws had run through the

carpet. It was full of little holes: there were some large ones, and

more than one thin place. At one corner a strip of it was torn, and hung

forlornly.

‘We must mend it,’ said Anthea; ‘never mind about my stockings. I can

sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there’s no time to do them

properly. I know it’s awful and no girl would who respected herself,

and all that; but the poor dear carpet’s more important than my silly

stockings. Let’s go out now this very minute.’

So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there

is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor in

Kentish Town either. However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture fingering

seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that day Jane and

Anthea darned and darned and darned. The boys went out for a walk in

the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up and down the table--for

exercise, as it said--and talked to the industrious girls about their

carpet.

‘It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from Kidderminster,’

it said, ‘it is a carpet with a past--a Persian past. Do you know that

in happier years, when that carpet was the property of caliphs, viziers,

kings, and sultans, it never lay on a floor?’

‘I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,’ Jane interrupted.

‘Not of a MAGIC carpet,’ said the Phoenix; ‘why, if it had been allowed

to lie about on floors there wouldn’t be much of it left now. No,

indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and

ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, embroidered with

gems of fabulous value. It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of

princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings.

Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it--except in the

way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took

their shoes off. And YOU--’

‘Oh, DON’T!’ said Jane, very near tears. ‘You know you’d never have been

hatched at all if it hadn’t been for mother wanting a carpet for us to

walk on.’

‘You needn’t have walked so much or so hard!’ said the bird, ‘but

come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the

Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.’

‘Relate away,’ said Anthea--‘I mean, please do.’

‘The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,’ began the bird, ‘had in

her cradle been the subject of several enchantments. Her grandmother had

been in her day--’

But what in her day Zulieka’s grandmother had been was destined never to

be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on

each brow were the traces of deep emotion. On Cyril’s pale brow stood

beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert

was a large black smear.

‘What ails ye both?’ asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that

story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting

like that.

‘Oh, do shut up, for any sake!’ said Cyril, sinking into a chair.

Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly--

‘Squirrel doesn’t mean to be a beast. It’s only that the MOST AWFUL

thing has happened, and stories don’t seem to matter so much. Don’t be

cross. You won’t be when you’ve heard what’s happened.’

‘Well, what HAS happened?’ said the bird, still rather crossly; and

Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long

needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.

‘The most awful thing you can possibly think of,’ said Cyril. ‘That nice

chap--our own burglar--the police have got him, on suspicion of stolen

cats. That’s what his brother’s missis told me.’

‘Oh, begin at the beginning!’ cried Anthea impatiently.

‘Well, then, we went out, and down by where the undertaker’s is, with

the china flowers in the window--you know. There was a crowd, and of

course we went to have a squint. And it was two bobbies and our burglar

between them, and he was being dragged along; and he said, “I tell you

them cats was GIVE me. I got ‘em in exchange for me milking a cow in a

basement parlour up Camden Town way.”

‘And the people laughed. Beasts! And then one of the policemen said

perhaps he could give the name and address of the cow, and he said, no,

he couldn’t; but he could take them there if they’d only leave go of his

coat collar, and give him a chance to get his breath. And the policeman

said he could tell all that to the magistrate in the morning. He didn’t

see us, and so we came away.’

‘Oh, Cyril, how COULD you?’ said Anthea.

‘Don’t be a pudding-head,’ Cyril advised. ‘A fat lot of good it would

have done if we’d let him see us. No one would have believed a word we

said. They’d have thought we were kidding. We did better than let him

see us. We asked a boy where he lived and he told us, and we went there,

and it’s a little greengrocer’s shop, and we bought some Brazil nuts.

Here they are.’ The girls waved away the Brazil nuts with loathing and

contempt.

‘Well, we had to buy SOMETHING, and while we were making up our minds

what to buy we heard his brother’s missis talking. She said when he came

home with all them miaoulers she thought there was more in it than met

the eye. But he WOULD go out this morning with the two likeliest of

them, one under each arm. She said he sent her out to buy blue ribbon to

put round their beastly necks, and she said if he got three months’ hard

it was her dying word that he’d got the blue ribbon to thank for it;

that, and his own silly thieving ways, taking cats that anybody would

know he couldn’t have come by in the way of business, instead of things

that wouldn’t have been missed, which Lord knows there are plenty such,

and--’

‘Oh, STOP!’ cried Jane. And indeed it was time, for Cyril seemed like a

clock that had been wound up, and could not help going on. ‘Where is he

now?’

‘At the police-station,’ said Robert, for Cyril was out of breath. ‘The

boy told us they’d put him in the cells, and would bring him up

before the Beak in the morning. I thought it was a jolly lark last

night--getting him to take the cats--but now--’

‘The end of a lark,’ said the Phoenix, ‘is the Beak.’

‘Let’s go to him,’ cried both the girls jumping up. ‘Let’s go and tell

the truth. They MUST believe us.’

‘They CAN’T,’ said Cyril. ‘Just think! If any one came to you with such

a tale, you couldn’t believe it, however much you tried. We should only

mix things up worse for him.’

‘There must be something we could do,’ said Jane, sniffing very

much--‘my own dear pet burglar! I can’t bear it. And he was so nice,

the way he talked about his father, and how he was going to be so extra

honest. Dear Phoenix, you MUST be able to help us. You’re so good and

kind and pretty and clever. Do, do tell us what to do.’

The Phoenix rubbed its beak thoughtfully with its claw.

‘You might rescue him,’ it said, ‘and conceal him here, till the

law-supporters had forgotten about him.’

‘That would be ages and ages,’ said Cyril, ‘and we couldn’t conceal him

here. Father might come home at any moment, and if he found the burglar

here HE wouldn’t believe the true truth any more than the police would.

That’s the worst of the truth. Nobody ever believes it. Couldn’t we take

him somewhere else?’

Jane clapped her hands.

‘The sunny southern shore!’ she cried, ‘where the cook is being queen.

He and she would be company for each other!’

And really the idea did not seem bad, if only he would consent to go.

So, all talking at once, the children arranged to wait till evening, and

then to seek the dear burglar in his lonely cell.

Meantime Jane and Anthea darned away as hard as they could, to make the

carpet as strong as possible. For all felt how terrible it would be if

the precious burglar, while being carried to the sunny southern shore,

were to tumble through a hole in the carpet, and be lost for ever in the

sunny southern sea.

The servants were tired after Mrs Wigson’s party, so every one went to

bed early, and when the Phoenix reported that both servants were snoring

in a heartfelt and candid manner, the children got up--they had never

undressed; just putting their nightgowns on over their things had been

enough to deceive Eliza when she came to turn out the gas. So they were

ready for anything, and they stood on the carpet and said--

‘I wish we were in our burglar’s lonely cell.’ and instantly they were.

I think every one had expected the cell to be the ‘deepest dungeon below

the castle moat’. I am sure no one had doubted that the burglar, chained

by heavy fetters to a ring in the damp stone wall, would be tossing

uneasily on a bed of straw, with a pitcher of water and a mouldering

crust, untasted, beside him. Robert, remembering the underground passage

and the treasure, had brought a candle and matches, but these were not

needed.

The cell was a little white-washed room about twelve feet long and

six feet wide. On one side of it was a sort of shelf sloping a little

towards the wall. On this were two rugs, striped blue and yellow, and a

water-proof pillow. Rolled in the rugs, and with his head on the pillow,

lay the burglar, fast asleep. (He had had his tea, though this the

children did not know--it had come from the coffee-shop round the

corner, in very thick crockery.) The scene was plainly revealed by the

light of a gas-lamp in the passage outside, which shone into the cell

through a pane of thick glass over the door.

‘I shall gag him,’ said Cyril, ‘and Robert will hold him down. Anthea

and Jane and the Phoenix can whisper soft nothings to him while he

gradually awakes.’

This plan did not have the success it deserved, because the burglar,

curiously enough, was much stronger, even in his sleep, than Robert and

Cyril, and at the first touch of their hands he leapt up and shouted out

something very loud indeed.

Instantly steps were heard outside. Anthea threw her arms round the

burglar and whispered--

‘It’s us--the ones that gave you the cats. We’ve come to save you, only

don’t let on we’re here. Can’t we hide somewhere?’

Heavy boots sounded on the flagged passage outside, and a firm voice

shouted--

‘Here--you--stop that row, will you?’

‘All right, governor,’ replied the burglar, still with Anthea’s arms

round him; ‘I was only a-talking in my sleep. No offence.’

It was an awful moment. Would the boots and the voice come in. Yes! No!

The voice said--

‘Well, stow it, will you?’

And the boots went heavily away, along the passage and up some sounding

stone stairs.

‘Now then,’ whispered Anthea.

‘How the blue Moses did you get in?’ asked the burglar, in a hoarse

whisper of amazement.

‘On the carpet,’ said Jane, truly.

‘Stow that,’ said the burglar. ‘One on you I could ‘a’ swallowed, but

four--AND a yellow fowl.’

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, sternly, ‘you wouldn’t have believed any one if

they’d told you beforehand about your finding a cow and all those cats

in our nursery.’

‘That I wouldn’t,’ said the burglar, with whispered fervour, ‘so help me

Bob, I wouldn’t.’

‘Well, then,’ Cyril went on, ignoring this appeal to his brother, ‘just

try to believe what we tell you and act accordingly. It can’t do you any

HARM, you know,’ he went on in hoarse whispered earnestness. ‘You can’t

be very much worse off than you are now, you know. But if you’ll just

trust to us we’ll get you out of this right enough. No one saw us come

in. The question is, where would you like to go?’

‘I’d like to go to Boolong,’ was the instant reply of the burglar. ‘I’ve

always wanted to go on that there trip, but I’ve never ‘ad the ready at

the right time of the year.’

‘Boolong is a town like London,’ said Cyril, well meaning, but

inaccurate, ‘how could you get a living there?’

The burglar scratched his head in deep doubt.

‘It’s ‘ard to get a ‘onest living anywheres nowadays,’ he said, and his

voice was sad.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Jane, sympathetically; ‘but how about a sunny

southern shore, where there’s nothing to do at all unless you want to.’

‘That’s my billet, miss,’ replied the burglar. ‘I never did care about

work--not like some people, always fussing about.’

‘Did you never like any sort of work?’ asked Anthea, severely.

‘Lor’, lumme, yes,’ he answered, ‘gardening was my ‘obby, so it was. But

father died afore ‘e could bind me to a nurseryman, an’--’

‘We’ll take you to the sunny southern shore,’ said Jane; ‘you’ve no idea

what the flowers are like.’

‘Our old cook’s there,’ said Anthea. ‘She’s queen--’

‘Oh, chuck it,’ the burglar whispered, clutching at his head with both

hands. ‘I knowed the first minute I see them cats and that cow as it was

a judgement on me. I don’t know now whether I’m a-standing on my hat or

my boots, so help me I don’t. If you CAN get me out, get me, and if you

can’t, get along with you for goodness’ sake, and give me a chanst

to think about what’ll be most likely to go down with the Beak in the

morning.’

‘Come on to the carpet, then,’ said Anthea, gently shoving. The others

quietly pulled, and the moment the feet of the burglar were planted on

the carpet Anthea wished:

‘I wish we were all on the sunny southern shore where cook is.’

And instantly they were. There were the rainbow sands, the tropic

glories of leaf and flower, and there, of course, was the cook, crowned

with white flowers, and with all the wrinkles of crossness and tiredness

and hard work wiped out of her face.

‘Why, cook, you’re quite pretty!’ Anthea said, as soon as she had got

her breath after the tumble-rush-whirl of the carpet. The burglar stood

rubbing his eyes in the brilliant tropic sunlight, and gazing wildly

round him on the vivid hues of the tropic land.

‘Penny plain and tuppence coloured!’ he exclaimed pensively, ‘and well

worth any tuppence, however hard-earned.’

The cook was seated on a grassy mound with her court of copper-coloured

savages around her. The burglar pointed a grimy finger at these.

‘Are they tame?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do they bite or scratch, or do

anything to yer with poisoned arrows or oyster shells or that?’

‘Don’t you be so timid,’ said the cook. ‘Look’e ‘ere, this ‘ere’s only

a dream what you’ve come into, an’ as it’s only a dream there’s no

nonsense about what a young lady like me ought to say or not, so I’ll

say you’re the best-looking fellow I’ve seen this many a day. And the

dream goes on and on, seemingly, as long as you behaves. The things what

you has to eat and drink tastes just as good as real ones, and--’

‘Look ‘ere,’ said the burglar, ‘I’ve come ‘ere straight outer the pleece

station. These ‘ere kids’ll tell you it ain’t no blame er mine.’

‘Well, you WERE a burglar, you know,’ said the truthful Anthea gently.

‘Only because I was druv to it by dishonest blokes, as well you knows,

miss,’ rejoined the criminal. ‘Blowed if this ain’t the ‘ottest January

as I’ve known for years.’

‘Wouldn’t you like a bath?’ asked the queen, ‘and some white clothes

like me?’

‘I should only look a juggins in ‘em, miss, thanking you all the same,’

was the reply; ‘but a bath I wouldn’t resist, and my shirt was only

clean on week before last.’

Cyril and Robert led him to a rocky pool, where he bathed luxuriously.

Then, in shirt and trousers he sat on the sand and spoke.

‘That cook, or queen, or whatever you call her--her with the white bokay

on her ‘ed--she’s my sort. Wonder if she’d keep company!’

‘I should ask her.’

‘I was always a quick hitter,’ the man went on; ‘it’s a word and a blow

with me. I will.’

In shirt and trousers, and crowned with a scented flowery wreath which

Cyril hastily wove as they returned to the court of the queen, the

burglar stood before the cook and spoke.

‘Look ‘ere, miss,’ he said. ‘You an’ me being’ all forlorn-like, both on

us, in this ‘ere dream, or whatever you calls it, I’d like to tell you

straight as I likes yer looks.’

The cook smiled and looked down bashfully.

‘I’m a single man--what you might call a batcheldore. I’m mild in my

‘abits, which these kids’ll tell you the same, and I’d like to ‘ave the

pleasure of walkin’ out with you next Sunday.’

‘Lor!’ said the queen cook, ‘’ow sudden you are, mister.’

‘Walking out means you’re going to be married,’ said Anthea. ‘Why not

get married and have done with it? _I_ would.’

‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said the burglar. But the cook said--

‘No, miss. Not me, not even in a dream. I don’t say anythink ag’in the

young chap’s looks, but I always swore I’d be married in church, if at

all--and, anyway, I don’t believe these here savages would know how

to keep a registering office, even if I was to show them. No, mister,

thanking you kindly, if you can’t bring a clergyman into the dream I’ll

live and die like what I am.’

‘Will you marry her if we get a clergyman?’ asked the match-making

Anthea.

‘I’m agreeable, miss, I’m sure,’ said he, pulling his wreath straight.

‘’Ow this ‘ere bokay do tiddle a chap’s ears to be sure!’

So, very hurriedly, the carpet was spread out, and instructed to fetch

a clergyman. The instructions were written on the inside of Cyril’s cap

with a piece of billiard chalk Robert had got from the marker at the

hotel at Lyndhurst. The carpet disappeared, and more quickly than you

would have thought possible it came back, bearing on its bosom the

Reverend Septimus Blenkinsop.

The Reverend Septimus was rather a nice young man, but very much mazed

and muddled, because when he saw a strange carpet laid out at his feet,

in his own study, he naturally walked on it to examine it more closely.

And he happened to stand on one of the thin places that Jane and Anthea

had darned, so that he was half on wishing carpet and half on plain

Scotch heather-mixture fingering, which has no magic properties at all.

The effect of this was that he was only half there--so that the children

could just see through him, as though he had been a ghost. And as for

him, he saw the sunny southern shore, the cook and the burglar and the

children quite plainly; but through them all he saw, quite plainly also,

his study at home, with the books and the pictures and the marble clock

that had been presented to him when he left his last situation.

He seemed to himself to be in a sort of insane fit, so that it did not

matter what he did--and he married the burglar to the cook. The cook

said that she would rather have had a solider kind of a clergyman, one

that you couldn’t see through so plain, but perhaps this was real enough

for a dream.

And of course the clergyman, though misty, was really real, and able

to marry people, and he did. When the ceremony was over the clergyman

wandered about the island collecting botanical specimens, for he was a

great botanist, and the ruling passion was strong even in an insane fit.

There was a splendid wedding feast. Can you fancy Jane and Anthea,

and Robert and Cyril, dancing merrily in a ring, hand-in-hand with

copper-coloured savages, round the happy couple, the queen cook and the

burglar consort? There were more flowers gathered and thrown than you

have ever even dreamed of, and before the children took carpet for home

the now married-and-settled burglar made a speech.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘and savages of both kinds, only I know

you can’t understand what I’m a saying of, but we’ll let that pass.

If this is a dream, I’m on. If it ain’t, I’m onner than ever. If it’s

betwixt and between--well, I’m honest, and I can’t say more. I don’t

want no more ‘igh London society--I’ve got some one to put my arm around

of; and I’ve got the whole lot of this ‘ere island for my allotment, and

if I don’t grow some broccoli as’ll open the judge’s eye at the cottage

flower shows, well, strike me pink! All I ask is, as these young gents

and ladies’ll bring some parsley seed into the dream, and a penn’orth of

radish seed, and threepenn’orth of onion, and I wouldn’t mind goin’ to

fourpence or fippence for mixed kale, only I ain’t got a brown, so I

don’t deceive you. And there’s one thing more, you might take away the

parson. I don’t like things what I can see ‘alf through, so here’s how!’

He drained a coconut-shell of palm wine.

It was now past midnight--though it was tea-time on the island.

With all good wishes the children took their leave. They also collected

the clergyman and took him back to his study and his presentation clock.

The Phoenix kindly carried the seeds next day to the burglar and his

bride, and returned with the most satisfactory news of the happy pair.

‘He’s made a wooden spade and started on his allotment,’ it said, ‘and

she is weaving him a shirt and trousers of the most radiant whiteness.’

The police never knew how the burglar got away. In Kentish Town Police

Station his escape is still spoken of with bated breath as the Persian

mystery.

As for the Reverend Septimus Blenkinsop, he felt that he had had a

very insane fit indeed, and he was sure it was due to over-study. So he

planned a little dissipation, and took his two maiden aunts to Paris,

where they enjoyed a dazzling round of museums and picture galleries,

and came back feeling that they had indeed seen life. He never told his

aunts or any one else about the marriage on the island--because no

one likes it to be generally known if he has had insane fits, however

interesting and unusual.