"There you touch one of the deeper mysteries," I explained to him. "Probably in the most expensive and luxurious mansions they have a flower-maid. A kind of Persephone who comes up from the underworld with her arms full of gerania and calceolarias. 'Housemaid,' she would put it in the advertisements, 'upper (where manservant kept); tall, of good appearance; free; several years' experience; understands vawses.' And in houses such as these the cinerarias would never wither or die. Every what-not would be a riotous profusion of et-ceteras from week's-end to week's-end. But with Jane it is different. Jane has her limitations. She comprehends match-boxes and detective fiction, but Araminta does the flowers." "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" said Charles, bunkering his cigar-stump badly to the right of the coal-scuttle. "I want you to help me," I told him, "because I shan't have time to attend to the matter myself. When I go out to-morrow I want you, before you leave, to fill all the vases all over the house. Pink roses will be the best, I think, and you can buy them at that little flowermonger's across the road." "But there are pink roses in the garden," he objected. "Only a kind of double dog-rose," I told him. "We never allow the dog-roses in the house: they haven't been properly trained. Besides you would certainly pick all the puppies and scratch yourself to death. There's no dog-rose without its tooth. You want the big ones that are grown exclusively on short stalks without any roots. And Araminta will never know that they haven't been there for several days at least." "All right," said Charles, "I'll tackle the flower-smith for you." When I came home on the following evening, before going upstairs, I peeped timidly into the dining-room and found to my delight that Charles had been as good as his word. All the vases had burst as though by a miracle into radiant blossom. Taking courage I went up to the drawing-room, found Araminta and saluted her, and then looked round with a smirk of conscious self-satisfaction. Charles had chosen pink carnations for the drawing-room, and the place was as starry as the final chapter of a _feuilleton_. "What do you think of the flowers?" I said proudly. "They're simply _lovely_," she replied. "But----" "But what?" I asked with a sudden vague qualm. "Don't you like pink carnations?" "I adore them," she said. "I was just going to ask how long they'd been there, that's all." "These particular ones?" I said airily. "Oh, two or three days, I think, at most; not more than that." "I see," she replied with a little smile. "That makes it more wonderful still." "How do you mean?" "Well, there isn't any water, you see, in the vases." * * * * * Illustration: COOL STUFF. THE TABLOID. "YOU CAN MAKE IT AS HOT FOR ME AS YOU LIKE, I SHALL _NOT_ DISSOLVE." [The above is prospective. No sensible person desires a dissolution during the present crisis abroad.]