I had written several couplets imploring the protection of the gods for the Lady of the Lane, and these I had sketched upon a large sheet of cardboard the better to scrutinize them. And thereby hangs the saddest of revelations. My friend the architect had sent me a number of advertisements with a request that I should persuade Banzai to attach them to the adjacent landscape. Returning from a tramp I beheld Olive (as I shall not scruple to call her) studying a placard on a telephone-post in the lane a little beyond her bungalow. It struck me as odd that she should be so interested in a mere advertisement of bungalows, when she was already cosily domiciled in the prettiest one the addition boasted. She laughed aloud, then turned guardedly, saw me, and marched demurely home without so much as glancing a second time in my direction. After she had tripped up the steps and vanished I saw the grievous thing that Banzai had done. By some inadvertence he had thrust the card bearing my verses among the advertisements, and with all the posts and poles and tree-boxes in Christendom to choose from, he had with unconscious malevolence nailed my couplets to the telephone-pole nearest the Manderson bungalow. It was an unpardonable atrocity, the enormity of which I shall not extenuate by suppressing the verses: “Spirits that guard all lovely things Bend o’er this path thy golden wings. Shield it from storms and powers malign: Make stars and sun above it shine. May none pass here on evil bent: Bless it to hearts of good intent, And when (like some bright catch of song One hears but once though waiting long) Lalage suddenly at the door Views the adoring landscape o’er, O swift let friendly winds attend And faithful to her errands bend! Then when adown the lane she goes Make leap before her vine and rose! From elfin land bring Ariel To walk beside and guard her well. Defend her, pray, from faun and gnome Till through the Lane she wanders home!” It was bad enough to apostrophize my neighbor’s wife in song; but to publish my infamy to the world was an even more grievous sin. I tore the thing down, bore it home, and thrust it into the kitchen range before the eyes of the contrite Banzai. Across the way Olive played, and I thought there was mockery in her playing. Realism is, after all, on much better terms with Romance than the critics would have us believe. If Manderson had not thawed sufficiently to borrow the realistic monkey-wrench which Banzai used on our lawn-mower, and if Olive had not romantically returned it a week later with a card on which she had scribbled “Many apologies for the long delay,” I might never have discovered that she was not in fact Manderson’s wife but his sister. Hers was the neatest, the best-bred of cards, and bore the name incontrovertibly----