For reasons of economy we get all our household requisites from Moggridge's Stores in the Tottenham Court Road, where we have a deposit account. Joan once worked out that by shopping in this manner we saved ninepence-halfpenny every time we spent one pound four and fivepence (her arithmetic cannot cope with percentages), besides having our goods delivered at the door by a motor van. This is a distinct score off our neighbours, who have to be content with theirs being brought round by a boy on a kind of three-wheeled Black-Maria. We are not on the telephone at home, so it is my part of the arrangement to ring up Moggridge's when I arrive at my office, and order what we want; that is, whenever I remember. But unfortunately I own the most impossible of head-pieces. It's all right to look at from the outside, but inside the valves leak, or else the taps run. Consequently it generally ends in Joan's writing a note when I return home in the evening. Thus I was not altogether surprised when, one morning after breakfast, Joan asked me to repeat her orders. I did so. "That's not what I said!" cried Joan. "That's only what you _thought_ I said. I did not even mention smoked salmon. Now listen while I tell you again; or, better still, write it down on a piece of paper." "That's no good," I said. "I always lose the paper. But go on with the list; I've got a very good idea." "Two pounds of Mocha coffee," she began. I picked up two coffee beans from the tray--Joan self-grinds and self-makes the coffee every morning--and placed them amongst the loose change in my trouser pocket. "Fourteen pounds of best loaf sugar," she went on. I drew my handkerchief from my sleeve, tied a small lump of sugar in a corner of it, and then placed it inside my hat. "Why put it in your hat?" asked Joan. "Because," I answered, "I may not have occasion to draw my handkerchief from its usual place, whereas I always _have_ to take my hat off." "How will you remember the quantity?". "Well, fourteen pounds make one stone, don't they? Before I remember the hard thing is a piece of sugar I shall think it's a stone." Joan sniffed contemptuously. "Then there's my ring," she continued, "the diamond and sapphire one that I left for resetting. The estimate they promised has not come, and besides there's the----" "Hold on a minute!" I cried. "Just tie a piece of cotton round my married finger." She did so. Then she went on: "The drawing-room clock should have been sent home, cleaned, last Friday. They haven't sent it." "Perhaps they expected it to _run down_," I suggested. Joan bore up wonderfully, and merely said, "Well--do something. Put the sardines in your pocket-book, or the marmalade in your gloves."