The Corner of Harley Street Part 16

"She'll put it in her bottom drawer," smiles Esther, leaning over me as I write, "and it'll become part of somebody else."

She drops a kiss upon my occiput.

"And now you must come to bed," she adds, "or perhaps to-morrow morning you'll be tired."

And by this, of course, she means "cross," though possibly, by some blessed dispensation, she imagines that she doesn't. For long (as I am minded to tell you, Hugh Pontrex), long before she's married, a woman has made a garment for the man who is to wed her--a beautiful and rather princely garment, and fortunately a bigger one than is usually required.

Because then, you see, she has only to take a tuck in it--and forget about it--and there's her man clad in his coat, just as she had always dreamed that he would come to her. Most women, I'm afraid, have to deepen this tuck until there's no more stuff that they can turn. And by that time, perhaps, we have begun to suspect that there has been some tampering with our property.

"D'you mean to say," we inquire bitterly, "that we've grown out of it already?"

And then it is that they must needs explain to us, with dewy eyes and hands upon our shoulders, how it's only the same dear garment still--_three times as thick_.

"What nonsense," says Esther above my shoulder.

"The garment?" I ask.

"No, the--the tuck."

But she looks a little conscious.

Ever yours, P. H.