Midway through dinner came a ring at the front-door bell. Palmer
interrupted her service to answer, and returned to me with a card on a
salver.
"A gentleman to see you, Sir," she announced.
"How strange, at this hour! Who can it be?" asked my wife.
"The gentleman to bury Dundee," I explained in a lowered voice, as I passed
the visiting-card, deeply edged with black, across the table to her.
Next morning my wife was able to announce that Cook had consented to stay.
The burial of Dundee by a real undertaker had gratified her sense of the
correct. I departed to the City filled with self-complacency.
For a month I dwelt in this fool's paradise. Then one evening my wife
gently broke the news.
"I have something serious to tell you. Cook has given notice."
"Who is dead now?" I asked.
"No one. She is engaged to be married."
"Married?"
"Yes, to the young undertaker."
"What young undertaker?"
"The one who buried Dundee."
It was too true. At supper, after the inhumation, a mutual esteem had
sprung up that rapidly ripened into love. The enterprising young
journeyman, so enamoured of his calling that he consented to inter dumb
creatures in his leisure time, had evidently discerned in Cook, with her
wealth of funeral lore, a helpmeet worthy of himself; while Cook on her
side, conquered by his diligence and discretion, considered she had secured
a respectable settlement for life, with the prospect of obsequies of the
highest class for herself.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Cheery Member (to Club pessimist_). "HULLO, OLD CHAP!
HAVING A BAD CROSSING?"]
* * * * *