the dining-room I marched in happy unconsciousness that the extreme dampness of the evening had flattened the crown of my cap, and that it and its frill were mere unconsidered limp rags, whilst the unpretending circlet of feathers had started into undue prominence, and struck straight out like a red nimbus all round my unconscious head.  How my fellow-guests managed to keep their countenances I cannot tell.  I am certain I never could have sat opposite to any one with such an Ojibbeway Indian’s head-dress on without giggling.  But no one gave me the least hint of my misfortune, and it only burst upon me suddenly when I returned to my own room and my own glass.  Still, there was a ray of hope left:  it might have been the dampness of the drive home which had worked me this woe.  I rushed into F——­’s dressing-room and demanded quite fiercely whether my cap had been like that all the time.

“Why, yes,” F——­ admitted; adding by way of consolation, “In fact, it is a good deal subdued now:  it was very wild all dinner-time.  I can’t say I admired it, but I supposed it was all right.”

Did ever any one hear such shocking apathy?  In answer to my reproaches for not telling me, he only said, “Why, what could you have done with it if you had known?  Taken it off and put it in your pocket, or what?”

I don’t know, but anything would have been better than sitting at table with a thing only fit for a May-Day sweep on one’s head.  It makes me hot and angry with myself even to think of it now.

F——­’s clothes could also relate some curious experiences which they have had to go through, not only at the hands of his washerwoman, but at those of his temporary valet, Jack (I beg his pardon, Umpashongwana) the Zulu, whose zeal exceeds anything one can imagine.  For instance, when he sets to work to brush F——­’s clothes of a morning he is by no means content to brush the cloth clothes.  Oh dear, no!  He brushes the socks, putting each carefully on his hand like a glove and brushing vigorously away.  As they are necessarily very thin socks for this hot weather, they are apt to melt away entirely under the process.  I say nothing of his blacking the boots inside as well as out, or of his laboriously scrubbing holes in a serge coat with a scrubbing-brush, for these are errors of judgment dictated by a kindly heart.  But when Jack puts a saucepan on the fire without any water and burns holes in it, or tries whether plates and dishes can support their own weight in the air without a table beneath them, then, I confess, my patience runs short.  But Jack is so imperturbable, so perfectly and genuinely astonished at the untoward result of his experiments, and so grieved that the inkosacasa (I have not an idea how the word ought to be spelt) should be vexed, that I am obliged to leave off shaking my head at him, which is the only way I have of expressing my displeasure.  He keeps on saying, “Ja, oui, yaas,” alternately, all the time, and I have to go away to laugh.