that they just wanted something different--good or bad, but different. In fact he, Mr. Wellcome, called 'em grousers and grizzlers--a pack o' frosty-faces. Now nobody expected the world to stand still. No doubt there was lots of things could be improved on. There was off-licences, for instance. Likewise Clubs. But (here Mr. Wellcome shook a fat forefinger warningly and impressively) Marriage wasn't one of 'em. If an Englishman's house was his castle, Marriage was what Mr. Wellcome might call the front-door key of it! (Applause far more loud and sustained than any mere humorous sally could have called forth.) Now he kept his front-door key on the bunch. (A "Go on with you!" from Mrs. Wellcome.) If the law allowed him two or three wives (and he had only to look round that table to wish ... but that was neither here nor there, and no doubt if he could he'd soon be wishing he hadn't--much laughter)--what he was going to say was that if he had twenty wives he'd keep 'em all on the bunch too.... "But instead o' that one of 'em keeps me on a bit of string," said Mr. Wellcome, dropping his voice so comically and despondingly that the whole table roared with laughter.... "And now," said Mr. Wellcome, beginning to pat his pockets in search of something, "let's cut the cackle and come to the horses.... Where is the dashed thing? Ah, here it is!..." And, as if his gift of champagne had not been enough, from the bottom of his breeches-pocket he drew forth a gold wrist-watch, ordered Aunt Jerry to hold out her hand, and snapped the chain about her wrist. It was, too, a "coming to the horses" in a sense quite other than the figurative one in which Mr. Wellcome used the expression. They were real horses to which he came. What else (Mr. Wellcome wanted to know) could be expected of him when Toreador had come in at twelve to one yesterday, and all the money on the favourite, and the bookies' pockets simply spilling gold and notes?... Nay, Mr. Wellcome described the scene. He set himself in an attitude, and his voice dropped to a hush. "I don't know how ever Sammy did it!" he confided to them. "He seemed to pick her together, then ... _hoooosh!_--Short head, and a hundred-and-twenty o' the best for W.W.!... 'Who give _you_ the office?' Dick Marks says to me when I goes to touch; 'if it hadn't been for you, Old Knowall, it'ld ha' been grand slam; _you_ know a bit, _you_ do' ... So now, ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Wellcome concluded, raising his glass, "in asking you all to drink the health of Mr. and Mrs. George Massey, I'll do so in the words of the poet: What is there in the vale of Life Half so delightful as a wife, When friendship, love and peace combine To stamp the marriage-bond divine?... I ask you to join me, ladies and gentlemen...."