And yet, as you will have noticed, even Claire is growing up, still faithful to a more boisterous March, but now and then holding out her finger-tips to May. She reposes, as you may remember, in the little room next to ours. And yesterday morning Esther called me from my shaving-glass. For she had opened the door between, to discover that Claire had flown. Whither we could guess very easily, as she was even then hammering Tom with her pillow. But there, balanced face downwards on the edge of the bolster, lay a momentarily forgotten photograph. Esther touched it with a smile. "D'you think we ought to?" she asked. And then she drew back. But at that moment a rather more vehement bump than its predecessors shook the wall and floor so thoroughly that the photo slid down upon the sheets, poised itself for a second upon its edge, and then dropped over, to reveal the very debonair figure of Mr. George Alexander as the gallant Rudolf Rassendyll. We looked at one another, and laughed--but only a little. And then Esther restored the picture to its resting-place. Some day we shall meet him in the Park, and Claire will behold a very genial, middle-aged gentleman, a little inclined to be plump. But he won't be Rudolf Rassendyll. And what will happen to his likeness? * * * * * "She'll put it in her bottom drawer," smiles Esther, leaning over me as I write, "and it'll become part of somebody else." She drops a kiss upon my occiput. "And now you must come to bed," she adds, "or perhaps to-morrow morning you'll be tired." And by this, of course, she means "cross," though possibly, by some blessed dispensation, she imagines that she doesn't. For long (as I am minded to tell you, Hugh Pontrex), long before she's married, a woman has made a garment for the man who is to wed her--a beautiful and rather princely garment, and fortunately a bigger one than is usually required. Because then, you see, she has only to take a tuck in it--and forget about it--and there's her man clad in his coat, just as she had always dreamed that he would come to her. Most women, I'm afraid, have to deepen this tuck until there's no more stuff that they can turn. And by that time, perhaps, we have begun to suspect that there has been some tampering with our property. "D'you mean to say," we inquire bitterly, "that we've grown out of it already?" And then it is that they must needs explain to us, with dewy eyes and hands upon our shoulders, how it's only the same dear garment still--_three times as thick_. "What nonsense," says Esther above my shoulder. "The garment?" I ask. "No, the--the tuck." But she looks a little conscious. Ever yours, P. H. End of Project Gutenberg's The Corner of Harley Street, by Henry Bashford