Mr.McCunn read the dutiful pages and smiled.

"Mamma's enjoying herself fine," he observed to the teapot.

He knew that for his wife the earthly paradise was a hydropathic, where she put on her afternoon dress and every jewel she possessed when she rose in the morning, ate large meals of which the novelty atoned for the nastiness, and collected an immense casual acquaintance, with whom she discussed ailments, ministers, sudden deaths, and the intricate genealogies of her class.

For his part he rancorously hated hydropathics, having once spent a black week under the roof of one in his wife's company.

He detested the food, the Turkish baths (he had a passionate aversion to baring his body before strangers), the inability to find anything to do and the compulsion to endless small talk.