They come in handy when Dulcie and her Wilhelm are staying with me. Herr Müller has an appointment in Aberdeen now. They are dreadfully poor, and a little Müller arrives every year, but Dulcie is as happy as she is incompetent and impecunious. She adds to their small muddled away income by giving lessons in astrology. I have learned the rudiments of the science, in order when I stay with her to help her with her pupils. But I never stay long as I have rheumatism as severely in Aberdeen as in Banff. Her Murderer "The truth is, I shall have to murder her!" said Mark gloomily. "I see no way out of it." "I could not be really happy with a husband whose hands were red with gore," I remarked. "I'm super-sensitive, I know. I can't help it. I was made so. If you murder her, I warn you I shall throw you over. And where would you be then?" "Exactly where I am now, as far as marrying you is concerned. You may throw me over as much as you like. I shan't turn a hair." He had not many hairs left to turn, and perhaps he remembered that fact, and that I held nothing sacred, for he hurried on in an aggrieved tone: "You never give me credit for any imagination. I'm not going to spill her blood. I'm much too tidy. I've thought it all out. I shall take you and her on a picnic to the New Forest, and trot you both about till you're nearly famished. And then for luncheon I shall produce a tin of potted lobster. I shall choose it very carefully with a bulging tin. Potted lobster is deadly when the tin bulges. And as the luncheon will be at my expense, she will eat more than usual. She will 'partake heartily,' as the newspapers will say afterwards; at least, as I hope they will have occasion to say. And then directly the meal is over the lobster will begin to do its duty, and swell inside her, and she'll begin struggling among the picnic things. I shan't be there. I shall have gone for a little stroll. You will support her in her last moments. I don't mind helping with the funeral. I'd do that willingly." I laughed, but I was near to tears. "How long have we been engaged?" asked Mark. "Twelve years. You know that as well as I do." "Well, as far as I can see, we shall be still affianced in twenty years' time. Aunt Pussy will see us all out." "We may toddle to the altar yet," I said hysterically, "when you are about eighty and I am seventy. And I shall give you a bath-chair, and you will present the bridesmaids, who must not be a day younger than myself, with rubber hot-water bottles. Rubber will be cheap again by then." He came back, and sat down by me. "It's damnable!" he said. "It is," I replied.