Suddenly Jack said: "I believe I could do it blindfold. Miss Muriel, will you look at the needle and see if you can will me?" Simms bucked up a bit, and seemed keen on the idea. So Jack was blindfolded, the needle hid, and Muriel took his hand. "Now, is your mind a perfect blank?" said Simms to Jack. "It always is," said Jack. "Very well, then. You ought soon to feel in a dreamy state, as though you were in another world. Miss Muriel, _you_ must think only of the needle." Jack held her hand tight, and looked most idiotically peaceful. After three minutes Simms spoke again. "Well?" he said eagerly. "I've got the dreamy, other-world state perfectly," said Jack, and then he gave at the knees just for the look of the thing. "This is silly," said Muriel, trying to get her hand away. Jack staggered violently, and gripped her hand again. "_Please_, Miss Muriel," implored Simms. "I feel sure he is just going to do it." Jack staggered again, sawed the air with his disengaged hand, and then turned right round and marched for the door, dragging Muriel behind him. The door slammed after them.... * * * * * * * * There is a little trick of sitting on a chair and picking a pin out of it with the teeth. I started Simms--who was all eagerness to follow the pair, and find out the mysterious force that was drawing them--upon this trick, for Jack is one of my best friends. When Jack and Muriel came back from the billiard-room, and announced that they were engaged, Simms was on his back on the floor with the chair on the top of him--explaining, for the fourth time, that if the thing had not overbalanced at the critical moment he would have secured the object. There is much to be said for this view. BACHELOR DAYS THE BUTTER "You mustn't think I am afraid of my housekeeper. Not at all. I frequently meet her on the stairs, and give her some such order as "I think--if you don't mind--I might have breakfast just a _little_ later--er, yes, about eight o'clock, yes, thank you." Or I ring the bell and say, "I--I--want-my-boots." We both recognise that it is mine to command and hers to obey. But in the matter of the butter I have let things slide, until the position is rapidly becoming an untenable one. Yet I doubt if a man of imagination and feeling could have acted otherwise, given the initial error. However, you shall hear. There are two sorts of butter, salt and fresh. Now, nobody is so fond of butter as I am; but butter (as I have often told everybody) isn't butter at all unless it is salt. The other kind is merely an inferior vaseline--the sort of thing you put on the axles of locomotives. Imagine, then, my disgust, when I took my first breakfast in these rooms eleven months ago, to find that the housekeeper had provided me with a large lump of vaseline!