“The Afghan November began yesterday,” said Crosby severely, and in another moment he was striding across the Park, leaving his recent companion scowling and muttering furiously on the seat.

“I don’t believe a word of his story,” he chattered to himself; “pack of nasty lies from beginning to end.  Wish I’d told him so to his face.  Calling himself an Afghan!”

The snorts and snarls that escaped from him for the next quarter of an hour went far to support the truth of the old saying that two of a trade never agree.

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD

Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way.  Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living.  Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the struggle.  Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being “none of her business.”  Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner.  It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady.  On this occasion she merely lost the train, which gave way to the first sign of impatience it had shown throughout the journey, and steamed off without her.  She bore the desertion with philosophical indifference; her friends and relations were thoroughly well used to the fact of her luggage arriving without her.  She wired a vague non-committal message to her destination to say that she was coming on “by another train.”  Before she had time to think what her next move might be she was confronted by an imposingly attired lady, who seemed to be taking a prolonged mental inventory of her clothes and looks.

“You must be Miss Hope, the governess I’ve come to meet,” said the apparition, in a tone that admitted of very little argument.

“Very well, if I must I must,” said Lady Carlotta to herself with dangerous meekness.

“I am Mrs. Quabarl,” continued the lady; “and where, pray, is your luggage?”

“It’s gone astray,” said the alleged governess, falling in with the excellent rule of life that the absent are always to blame; the luggage had, in point of fact, behaved with perfect correctitude.  “I’ve just telegraphed about it,” she added, with a nearer approach to truth.