This he did; and they had lived thoroughly happily ever since. Mrs. Harding believed intensely in the _Statesman_; read it every day, from the title to the printer's name; knew the name of every contributor, and could tell who had done what at a glance. Her great pride in going out was to take one of the cards sent to the office, and observe the effect it made upon the receiving attendant at operas, flower-shows, or conversazioni. She always took care that the tickets for these last were sent to her; and her head-dress of black-velvet bows with pearl-beads hanging down behind was well to the fore whenever a mummy was unrolled, the fossil jawbone of an antediluvian animal was descanted on, or some sallow missionary presented himself at Burlington House, to be congratulated by hundreds of dreary people on having escaped uneaten from some place to which he never ought to have gone. She herself was fond of having occasionally what she called "a social evening." This recreation was held on a Saturday, when there was no work at the _Statesman_ office, when the principal members of the staff would be bidden, and when the condiments provided would be brown-bread and butter rolled into _cornets_, tea and coffee and lemonade, while the recreation consisted in conversation (amongst men who had met for every night during the past twelve months), and in examining photographs of the city of Prague. The ribald young men at the office spoke of Mrs. Harding as "Plutarch," a name given to her one night when Mr. Slater, the dramatic critic, asked her what novel she was then reading, and she replied, "Novel, sir! Plutarch's Lives!" But they all liked her, notwithstanding; and for her sake and their dear old chief's did penitential duty at the occasional "social evenings" in Decorum Street.