I do not despise convention.  Indeed, I follow it up to the point when it puts on the airs of revealed religion.  My neighbours and I decide on a certain code of manners which will enable us to meet without mutual offence.  I agree to put my handkerchief up to my nose when I sneeze in his presence, and he contracts not to wipe muddy boots on my sofa.  I undertake not to shock his wife by parading my hideous immorality before her eyes, and he binds himself not to aggravate my celibacy by beating her or kissing her when I am paying a call.  I agree, by wearing an arbitrarily fixed costume when I dine with him, to brand myself with the stamp of a certain class of society, so that his guests shall receive me without question, and he in return gives me a well-ordered dinner served with the minimum amount of inconvenience to myself that his circumstances allow.  Many folks make what they are pleased to call unconventionality a mere cloak for selfish disregard of the feelings and tastes of others.  Bohemianism too often means piggish sloth or slatternly ineptitude.

Convention is solely a matter of manners.  That is why I desire to instil some convention into what, for want of a more accurate term, I may allude to as Carlotta’s mind.  It will save me much trouble in the future.

I summoned Carlotta.

“Carlotta,” I said, “I am going to take you to Hyde Park and show you the English aristocracy wearing their best clothes and their best behaviour.  You must do the same.”

“My best clothes?” cried Carlotta, her face lighting up.

“Your very best.  Make haste.”

I smiled.  She ran from the room and in an incredibly short time reappeared unblushingly bare-necked and bare-armed in the evening dress that had caused her such dismay on Saturday.

I jumped to my feet.  There is no denying that she looked amazingly beautiful.  She looked, in fact, disconcertingly beautiful.  I found it hard to tell her to take the dress off again.

“Is it wrong?” she asked Nvith a pucker of her baby lips.

“Yes, indeed,” said I.  “People would be shocked.”

“But on Saturday evening—­“she began.

“I know, my child,” I interrupted.  “In society you are scarcely respectable unless you go about half naked at night; but to do so in the daytime would be the grossest indecency.  I’ll explain some other time.”

“I shall never understand,” said Carlotta.

Two great tears stood, one on each eyelid, and fell simultaneously down her cheeks.

“What on earth are you crying for?” I asked aghast.

“You are not pleased with me,” said Carlotta, with a choke in her voice.

The two tears fell like rain-drops on to her bosom, and she stood before me a picture of exquisite woe.  Then I did a very foolish thing.

Last week a little gold brooch in a jeweller’s window caught my fancy.  I bought it with the idea of presenting it to Carlotta, when an occasion offered, as a reward for peculiar merit.  Now, however, to show her that I was in no way angry, I abstracted the bauble from the drawer of my writing-table, and put it in her hand.