On these lines Elizabeth has "put in" for many articles in the course of her chequered career. She has had fleeting possession of a steel engraving of QUEEN VICTORIA, a watch that never would go--until her payments ceased--a sewing-machine (treadle), a set of vases and a marble timepiece. The timepiece, she explained, was destined for "the bottom drawer," which she had begun to furnish from the moment a young man first inquired which was her night out. As all these things were taken from her directly her payments fell off, I thought I had better give her the benefit of my ripe judgment. "I shouldn't buy anything on the instalment plan, if I were you," I advised. "Some people seem to be made for the system, but you are not one of them." "But I 'aven't told you wot I'm buyin' now," she said excitedly, putting a plate on the rack as she spoke. I ought to say she meant to put it on the rack; that it fell two inches short wasn't Elizabeth's fault. "It was cracked afore," she murmured mechanically as she gathered up the fragments. "Yes, I pays a shillin' a week an' I gets a grammerfone." "A what?" I gasped. "A grammerfone--to play, you know." "Where will it play?" I asked feebly. "'Ere," she said, waving a comprehensive hand; "an' it won't 'arf liven the place up. My friend 'as 'ers goin' all day long." I stifled a moan of horror, for I am one of the elect few who loathe gramophones, even at their best and costliest. "Elizabeth," I cried, tears of anguish rising to my eyes, "let me implore you not to get one of those horr--I mean, not to be imposed on again." "I've got it," she announced. "I meantersay I've paid the first shillin' an' it's comin' to-morrow. I 'ave it a month on trial." The month certainly was a trial--for me. Ours is not one of those old-fashioned residences with thick walls that muffle sound, and where servants can be consigned to dwell in the bowels of the earth. Every noise which arises in the kitchen, from Elizabeth's badinage with the butcher's boy to the raucous grind of the knife-machine, echoes through the house _via_ the study where I work. Thus, although Elizabeth kept the kitchen-door shut, I found myself compelled for one-half of the day to consider an insistent demand as to the ultimate destination of flies in the winter-time. The rest of the day the gramophone gave us _K-K-K-Katie_. (Elizabeth had only two records to begin with.) I became unnerved. My work suffered. It began to trickle back to me accompanied by the regrets of editors; and to writers the regrets of editors are the most poignant in the world.