Gosling returned to his Evening News, which presently slipped gently from his hand to the floor. Mrs Gosling looked up from her sewing and put a finger on her lips. The voices of Blanche and Millie were subdued to sibilant whisperings. Gosling had forgotten his economic problems, and his daring abstractions concerning a world despoiled of male activity, especially of that essential activity, as he figured it, the making of money--the wage-earner was enjoying his after-dinner nap, hedged about, protected and cared for by his womankind. There may have been a quarter of a million wage-earners in Greater London at that moment, who, however much they differed from Gosling on such minor questions as Tariff Reform or the capabilities of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have agreed with him as a matter of course, on the essentials he had discussed that evening. 3 At half-past nine the click of the letter-box, followed by a resounding double-knock, announced the arrival of the last post. Millie jumped up at once and went out eagerly. Mr Gosling opened his eyes and stared with drunken fixity at the mantelpiece; then, without moving the rest of his body, he began to grope automatically with his left hand for the fallen newspaper. He found it at last, picked it up and pretended to read with sleep-sodden eyes. "It's the post, dear," remarked Mrs Gosling. Gosling yawned enormously. "Who's it for?" he asked. "Millie! Millie!" called Mrs Gosling. "Why don't you bring the letters in?" Millie did not reply, but she came slowly into the room, in her hands a letter which she was examining minutely. "Who's it for, Mill?" asked Blanche, impatiently. "Father," replied Millie, still intent on her study. "It's a foreign letter. I seem to remember the writing, too, only I can't fix it exactly." "'Ere, 'and it over, my gel," said Gosling, and Millie reluctantly parted with her fascinating enigma. "I know that 'and, too," remarked Gosling, and he, also, would have spent some time in the attempt to guess the puzzle without looking up the answer within the envelope, but the three spectators, who were not sharing his interest, manifested impatience. "Well, ain't you going to open it, father?" asked Millie, and Mrs Gosling looked at her husband over her spectacles and remarked, "It must be a business letter, if it comes from foreign parts." "Don't get business letters to this address," returned the head of the house, "besides which it's from Warsaw; we don't do nothin' with Warsaw." At last he opened the letter. The three women fixed their gaze on Gosling's face. "Well?" ejaculated Millie, after a silence of several seconds. "Aren't you going to tell us?" "You'd never guess," said Gosling triumphantly. "Anyone we know?" asked Blanche. "Yes, a gentleman." "Oh! tell us, father," urged the impatient Millie. "It's from the Mr Thrale, as lodged with us once," announced Gosling.