_Tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle!_ "Poor little Maudie," thought an infatuated man of forty-five. "Poor little girl, she'll miss me to-night." _Just when the Red June Roses blow I plucked her one a month ago. Its half-blown crimson to eclipse, I laid it on her smiling lips: The balmy fragrance of the south Drew sweetness from her sweeter mouth, Swiftly do golden hours creep, To hold is not to keep._ _Tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle!_ "I mustn't neglect Maudie," thought a sentimental man of forty-five. "Poor little lonely Maudie! It's a wonderful thing for a man to be loved as she loves me." _Tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle!_ _The red June Roses now are past, This very day I broke the last-- And now its perfumed breath is hid, With her, with her, beneath a coffin lid: Ah--h--h--h--h--h,_ _There will its petals fall apart, And wither on her icy heart:-- At three red Roses' Roses' cost My world was gained, my world was gained And lost!_ _Tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle--tinkle---tinkle-tink!_ "That's a very pretty song, you know," said Jemmie. "I enjoyed that. I wish you'd sing oftener of an evening." Mary looked round in perplexity. "I haven't sung after dinner for five years," she reminded him coldly. "As long as that? Surely not as long ago as that?" "Five years ago, Jemmie, you asked me if it was necessary every evening to sit down immediately after dinner at the piano." "I must have had a headache or something," he protested. "Yet you never noticed that I no longer sang." "I suppose I took it for granted that you didn't want to sing. But I thoroughly enjoyed it this evening. I don't know, I suppose I was in the mood for singing. Why don't you sing another?" She lifted the seat of the music-stool, and after rummaging among a pile of tattered songs she found the one she wanted: _I had a message to send her, To her whom my heart loved best._ When the last tinkle had died away, Jemmie, who had stopped crackling _The Times_ because there was nothing more to read that interested him, asked his wife if he had not heard the song before somewhere. She smiled ironically. "I expect I've heard you sing it," he hastened to add apologetically. "No. Not me." Good heavens, could it be that he had heard Maudie sing that song? Maudie did sometimes sing sentimental songs on wet afternoons. Nonsense! If Maudie had sung it, Mary could not know that. Gossip could effect a good deal, but gossip could not discuss Maudie's choice of music. "Well, I don't know where I heard it," he declared. "And I certainly shall never reveal where or when it was," she murmured. While that night Mary was brushing her chestnut hair before the big oval mirror of her dressing-table her husband came and, bending over, kissed the tip of her ear.