Angelina should make a point of remembering the date of Edwin’s coats, and should mark them in an invisible place (on the lining of the inside of the sleeve is the best) with the date of the purchase; and with this triumphant proof of her accuracy should she face and utterly confound Edwin when he meets her request for the coat to be given away, with the remark, ‘_That_ coat! What can you be thinking of? I only bought it a month or two ago!’ He is often so flabbergasted at learning the treasure is at least eighteen months old that he says no more, and allows Angelina to bear it off to gladden the heart of some old pensioner, on whose back it somehow looks so extremely well that Edwin cannot believe Angelina was right in her dates, and at every opportunity points out its excellent appearance on Jones or Styles as a proof of her reckless extravagance. A little careful stealing from a husband who is an inveterate hoarder, and will not even succumb to the uncontradictable date, can be practised to advantage, and at the risk of exposing my own wickedness, and believing that a male eye rarely, if ever, falls upon my words of wisdom, I may tell Angelina in the very strictest confidence how I have sometimes been driven to circumvent the nameless one spoken of before. I have watched the gradual overflow of the wardrobe--ay, even on to the floor and the three chairs, and, biding my time, have neatly arranged the drawers, being quite sure I shall be asked immediately what I have done with all the precious things, missed the moment the dressing-room is entered. I disclose them arranged elsewhere, and after a week or two, when the gardener and the coachman’s children have been scanned surreptitiously but eagerly to see if I have already given these valuable relics away, they become forgotten, or are only asked after occasionally; then, as time goes on, they are quite forgotten, and if asked for after three months cannot be found, as they are already doing duty elsewhere, under new and altered circumstances. Old boots it is almost impossible to get rid of without a positive battle, though how a man’s happiness or welfare depends on knowing he has fourteen pairs of dreadful old boots under the kitchen dresser, to say nothing of as many more concealed in his own room and his dressing-room, is really more than I can understand, and must be one of those problems of life we are compelled to take as such, and leave for time to solve, if it possibly can. I do not think it is of the very smallest use to give Edwin anything pretty of his ‘very own,’ as the children say, in his dressing-room. It is always a narrow, circumscribed spot, and brackets are apt to be knocked askew and their contents smashed, picture-glasses also coming in for similar hard treatment, while extra shelves for books are soon overloaded, and come rattling down in the dead of night, taking at least ten years off one’s life with the awful fright received.