Mr. Teak made no reply, but, after spending the evening in deliberation, issued the invitation at the supper-table.  His wife’s eyes sparkled at first; then the light slowly faded from them and her face fell.

“I can’t go,” she said, at last.  “I’ve got nothing to go in.”

“Rubbish!” said her husband, starting uneasily.

“It’s a fact,” said Mrs. Teak.  “I should like to go, too—­it’s years since I was at the Zoo.  I might make my jacket do; it’s my hat I’m thinking about.”

Mr. Chase, meeting Mr. Teak’s eye, winked an obvious suggestion.

“So, thanking you all the same,” continued Mrs. Teak, with amiable cheerfulness, “I’ll stay at ’ome.”

“’Ow-’ow much are they?” growled her husband, scowling at Mr. Chase.

“All prices,” replied his wife.

“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Teak, in a grating voice.  “You go in to buy a hat at one and eleven-pence; you get talked over and flattered by a man like a barber’s block, and you come out with a four-and-six penny one.  The only real difference in hats is the price, but women can never see it.”

Mrs. Teak smiled faintly, and again expressed her willingness to stay at home.  They could spend the afternoon working in the garden, she said.  Her husband, with another indignant glance at the right eye of Mr. Chase, which was still enacting the part of a camera-shutter, said that she could have a hat, but asked her to remember when buying it that nothing suited her so well as a plain one.

The remainder of the week passed away slowly; and Mr. Teak, despite his utmost efforts, was unable to glean any information from Mr. Chase as to that gentleman’s ideas concerning the hiding-place.  At every suggestion Mr. Chase’s smile only got broader and more indulgent.

“You leave it to me,” he said.  “You leave it to me, and when you come home from a happy outing I ’ope to be able to cross your little hand with three ’undred golden quids.”

“But why not tell me?” urged Mr. Teak.

“’Cos I want to surprise you,” was the reply.  “But mind, whatever you do, don’t let your wife run away with the idea that I’ve been mixed up in it at all.  Now, if you worry me any more I shall ask you to make it thirty pounds for me instead of twenty.”

The two friends parted at the corner of the road on Saturday afternoon, and Mr. Teak, conscious of his friend’s impatience, sought to hurry his wife by occasionally calling the wrong time up the stairs.  She came down at last, smiling, in a plain hat with three roses, two bows, and a feather.

“I’ve had the feather for years,” she remarked.  “This is the fourth hat it has been on—­but, then, I’ve taken care of it.”

Mr. Teak grunted, and, opening the door, ushered her into the street.  A sense of adventure, and the hope of a profitable afternoon made his spirits rise.  He paid a compliment to the hat, and then, to the surprise of both, followed it up with another—­a very little one—­to his wife.