"DARNED LITTLE FOP."] * * * * * THE CAP THAT FITS. "Gerald, dear," said my wife the other evening, "I wish you'd write and order some more notepaper; we've hardly any left." "All right, Margaret. What sort do you want? The last lot was beastly--too thick to make into spills and not large enough for drawing up the fire." "Well, here's a list of the different kinds they have in stock at Jones and Robinson's." I took it from her and glanced through it. "What do you say to 'Cream Laid,' Margaret? I like the sound of that. It will make me feel so nice and cool in the hot weather to think of the rows of fresh-faced country girls, in their spotless white overalls, pouring the cream delicately over the paper. I wonder how they get it to stop exactly at the edge?" "It wants a very cool head and steady hand, I expect," said Margaret; "they'd all be picked cream-layers, of course. But how would you like 'thick hand-made paper with deckle edges'? What are deckle edges, I wonder; and how is paper hand-made?" "Rather like treading grapes, I fancy, only that's done by foot. I mean they smash up the pulp with a very heavy pestle in a huge----" "Mortar!" cried Margaret triumphantly. "Yes; but am I telling this story or are you? Well, and then they put it through a mangle----" "Wurzel," said Margaret. "Wrong--just a mangle, and roll it out flat, after which they deckle the edges." "But how do they do that, Gerald?" "Oh, they just call in the edge-deckler and say, 'See to 't that yon edges be deckled ere set o' sun,' and he sees to 't. His is a most important post, I believe." Margaret came and sat on a tuffet by my chair. "Sorry about wurzel," she said. "Now tell me all about machine-made paper, there's a dear. It will be so nice to be able to explain all this to Nat when he's older." "Paper-making by machinery, my dear," I said graciously, "is a most complicated process. I won't puzzle you with all the details, but roughly the idea is to pulp up the--er--rags and so on in a huge sort of--er--bowl, and then to roll it out thin in the rolling-out machine." Margaret thought this over. "It sounds just the same as the hand-made," she said. "Oh, _no_," I said quickly; "it's all done by _machinery_, you see. Pistons and rollers and--er--mechanical edge-decklers and so on." "And what does 'Linen Wove' mean?" "They employ people to thread the paper with linen threads, my dear. A very delicate performance; that's why Linen Wove is so expensive. Azure Wove is, of course, done with blue flaxen threads. Silurian Bond is made by a fellowship of geologists, and for Chelsea Bank they have a factory on the bank of the Thames at Cheyne Walk. That's all I need tell you, though I know a lot more."