“Now, Mister Bruin Went a-wooin’, The lady said ‘What are you doin’!’ “I’m stumped. I can’t get any farther.” “Oh, yes you can, daddy!” “Very well.” “Let’s call him Mr. Bear instead, And say his mouth was very red. Miss Bruin had a Paris gown on, She was a sweet phenomenownon. The gloves she wore were just nineteens, Of course you know what that size means! Mr. Bear wore thirty-ones, But then he was so fond of buns. He asked Miss B. to be his wife, And said, ‘I will lay down my life.’ She answered him, ‘Now, how much money Can you afford, and how much honey?’ Poor B. looked rather brown at that, For he was not a plutocrat. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore, That I should be so very poor. I’ll start a bun shop, if you like, And buy you a new motor-bike.’ She said, ‘I know where all the buns would go, And motor biking’s much too low.’ Poor Teddy flew off in disgust, Saying, ‘Marry a Marquis if you must.’” Lynette clapped her hands. “What a horrid Miss Bruin! I hope she died an old maid!” “No, she married Lord Grizzley. And he gave her twopence a week to dress on, and made her give him her fur to stuff his bath-chair cushions with.” “How splendid! That’s just what ought to have happened, daddy.” When he had kissed her “good night,” and seen her snuggle down with her hair spread out over the pillow, Canterton went down to the library and, in passing the door of the drawing-room, heard Mrs. Brocklebank’s voice sending out its slow, complacent notes. This woman always had a curious psychical effect on him. She smeared all the fine outlines of life, and brought an unpleasant odour into the house that penetrated everywhere. What was more, she had the effect of making him look at his wife with that merciless candour that discovers every crudity, and every trifle that is unlovely. Gertrude was a most excellent woman. He saw her high forehead, her hat tilted at the wrong angle, her hair straggling in wisps, her finnicking vivacity, her thin, wriggling shoulders, the way she mouthed her words and poked her chin forward when she talked. The clarity of his vision often shocked him, especially when he tried to remember her as a slim and rather over-enthusiastic girl. Had they both changed so vastly, and why? He knew that his wife had become subtly repulsive to him, not in the mere gross physical sense alone, but in her mental odour. They ate together, but slept apart. He never entered her room. The idea of touching her provoked some fastidious instinct within him, and made him shrink from the imagined contact.