"Well," he said, "I thought of it yesterday. I let my chop get cold owing to all kinds of distractions, and then found it delicious. 'This is the food for busy men,' I said, and in the late afternoon I walked down Fleet Street and looked for a suitable site. That's where I stopped. A really capable man would have found the site and arranged for the restaurant. But my fate," he said, "is to make money for other people; never for myself. I have never touched a scheme that did not fail, and I have never given anyone else a piece of financial advice that was not successful. All the horses I ever backed have fallen dead at the starting gate. That's my luck. But otherwise--except for money--I don't think I'm so unlucky. For one thing I can always sleep, and I'm never ill." Lacey always has little odds and ends of information such as no one else can supply. The other day, for example, he had heard what muffin and crumpet men do in the summer. I don't say all of them, but one at any rate. He sews chenille spots on ladies' veils. Lacey also collects strange names and words, and just now is in transports of delight over a country cobbler's bill which included a charge of fourpence for "unsqueakening" a pair of boots. Naomi likes him no less than I do; and since husbands and wives, I have noticed, do not always agree about friends, this is most satisfactory. He likes her, too, and brings her little offerings which I feel sure he can ill afford. "You shouldn't buy all these things," Naomi says; to which he replies, "Buy! I never buy anything. Now and then I pick up something; but I never pay anything for it." Last night, for example, he brought her a sampler for her collection--a peculiarly amusing one, made by Katherine Vallance, who finished it on the 5th of August 1783. "It never ought to be given to you," said Mr. Lacey, "since it was obviously made for a plain woman; but I'm sure you'll like it." The verse runs thus: What is the blooming tincture of the skin To peace of mind and harmony within? What the bright sparkling of the finest eye To the soft soothing of a calm reply? Can comeliness of form, of shape, of air, With comeliness of words or deeds compare? No, those at first th' unwary heart may gain, But these, these only, can the heart retain! One wonders how the little Katherine came to set about embroidering those sentiments. But perhaps it was not a little Katherine at all, but a maturer one who had been jilted for a prettier face, and this was at once her consolation and revenge. Naomi's samplers offer a complete scheme of placid rectitude. Whether it was really easier to be good a hundred and more years ago than now one cannot know; but the testimony of the woolwork of the time makes virtue almost automatic. Thus, one of Naomi's samplers (the work of Lydia Vickers, aged ten) begins with this inquiry: How shall the young preserve their ways from all pollution free?