about, so that we shall be able to dispense with the boys."

"Oh, certainly, if you like," she replied, smiling unconcernedly; "only you'll soon get tired of it, I expect! We can't always hunt in couples-Darby and Joan sort of thing-awfully bad form; must go different ways You'll get sick to death of always doing.

sometimes.

the different seasons with me."

"Never, Honoria!" I said firmly. "I shall be perfectly happy with you for ever at my side; perfectly contented to be seen always in your company!"

"Really!" and she raised her eyebrows a little, then laughed again, and added coaxingly: "Don't be spooney, Will, there's a good fellow! I do hate being spooned upon, you know! Let us be as jolly as you like; but though we are just married, don't let people take us for a pair of fools!"

"I fail to understand your meaning, Honoria," I said rather vexedly. "Why should we be taken for fools? I really cannot see

"Oh, you know," laughed my boyish-looking wife, diving into one of her capacious jackets-pockets in search of a something,-I instinctively knew what it was. Yes, there, out it came! No cigarette-case this time, but one full of cigars, and I at once rose to the occasion with a manly fortitude that, I trust, did not ill become me.

The Hired Baby, etc.

6

woman.

"Honoria,” I said, "Honoria, my dear, my darling! Do oblige me by not smoking; not this evening, at any rate! I shall not be able to bear the sight of a cigar in your sweet mouth; I shall not indeed. I am a 'spooney' fellow, perhaps, but I love you and admire you, my dear, too much to let you appear even before my eyes at a disadvantage. It is not good for your health, I assure you! It will spoil your pretty teeth and play havoc with your nerves; and, besides this, Honoria, it is not a nice thing for a woman, especially an English It is all very well for ugly Russian matrons and withered old Spanish gipsies, but for a young, bonnie, fresh creature like you, Honoria, it is not the thing, believe me! Moreover, it gives you a masculine appearance, which is not at all becoming. I am in earnest, my dear! I want my wife to be above all things womanly, and now we are married I can tell you frankly that I hope you will never take a gun in your hands again. It was very plucky of you to show that you could shoot, you know, Honoria. I admired your spirit, but, of course, I always knew you only did it for fun. A woman can never be an actual follower of sport, any more than she can become a practised smoker, without losing the beautiful prestige of modesty and dignity with which Nature has endowed her."

Thus far Honoria had listened to me in absolute silence, a smile on her lips and her cigar-case still open

in her hand. Now, however, she gave way to unfeigned and irrepressible laughter.

"Upon my word," she exclaimed, "I never heard a better bit of sentimental palaver than that! Willie, you are a goose! For pity's sake, don't talk such oldfashioned nonsense to me. I'm past it. Georgie might like that sort of thing" (Georgie was my wife's youngest sister, a timid little morsel of a woman I had always despised), "but I thought you knew me better. Come, you're longing to have a smoke yourself, you know you are! Here!" and she held out her cigar-case with the most brilliant smile in the world. "You won't? Don't be a mule, now!" and she whipped out of her sidepocket a tiny silver match-box, lit a cigar, and again proffered it to me. I took it mechanically. I should have been a brute to refuse her on that evening of all evenings; but I still remonstrated feebly.

"Don't like what?" she inquired mirthfully. "The cigar? Then you don't know the flavour of good tobacco!"

"No, no, I don't mean the cigar," I said, puffing at it slowly as I spoke; "it is an exceedingly choice cigar, in fact, remarkably so; but I don't like your smoking one."

And I watched her in melancholy amaze as she placed a similar cigar to my own between her rosy

lips and began to puff away in evident delight. "I don't like your smoking," I repeated earnestly. "No, Honoria, I do not! I shall never like it!"

"Then you're very selfish," she returned, with perfect good-humour. "You wish to deprive your wife of a pleasure you indulge in yourself."

Now, there was a way of putting it!

"But, Honoria," I urged, "surely, surely men are permitted to do many things which, pardon me, are hardly fitted for the finer susceptibilities of women?"

She flicked off the ash from her "weed" with her little finger, settled her smoking-cap, and smiled a superior smile.

"Not a bit of it!" she replied. "Once, in those detestable 'good old times' some people are always talking about, men were permitted to keep women out of every sort of enjoyment, and nice tyrants they were! But now, nous avons changé tout cela"--she had a very charming French accent by the way-"and we are no longer the drudges, housekeepers, general servants and nurses that adorned that bygone age of darkness! are the equals of man. What he can do, we can do as well, and often better; we are his companions now, not his slaves. For instance, here am I-your wife

am I not?"

We

"Just so, Honoria," I murmured. What an excellent

!

cigar she had given me, to be sure!

my wife, my very dearly beloved wife

"Don't!" she interrupted. "It sounds like an epitaph!"

I laughed, it was impossible to help laughing. She was such a whimsical creature, such an extraordinary girl! She laughed too, and went on:

"Suppose I had lived and suppose you had lived in the 'good old times,' Willie, do you know what we should have done?"

I shook my head drowsily in the negative, and blinked my eyes at her in bland admiration. (That cigar was really first-class, and it was gradually having a softening influence on my brain.)

"We should have died of dulness," she declared emphatically. "Just died of it! We could never have borne it. Fancy! I should have been shut up nearly all day in the house, with a huge apron on, sorting jams and pickles, and counting over the sheets and pillow-cases like a silly old noodle, and you would have tumbled home drunk regularly every afternoon, and gone to bed under the table every evening!"

She nodded her head decisively and the tassel of her smoking-cap came down over her nose. She cast it off defiantly and looked at me with such a twinkling mischief in her eyes that I fairly roared.

"That last part of the daily entertainment would