‘And please bring the bond back with you,’ said Maude.

So it was that Frank, coming down upon the morning of his birthday, perceived a pretty silver cigarette-box laid in front of his plate.

‘Is this for me, my darling?’

‘Yes, Frank, a wee present from your wife.’

’How sweet of you!  I never saw such a lovely case.  Why, there’s something inside it.’

’Cigarettes, I suppose.

’No, it is a paper of some kind.  “Hotspur Insurance Company.”  Good Lord, I never seem for one instant to be able to shake that infernal thing off!  How on earth did it get in there?  What’s this?—­“I hereby guarantee to you—­” What’s this?  Maude, Maude, what have you been doing?’

‘Dear old boy,’ she cried, as she put her arms round him.  ’Dear old boy!  Oh, I do feel so happy!’

CHAPTER XVI—­THE BROWNING SOCIETY

It all began by Mrs. Hunt Mortimer, the smart little up-to-date wife of the solicitor, saying to Mrs. Beecher, the young bride of the banker, that in a place like Woking it was very hard to get any mental friction, or to escape from the same eternal grooves of thought and conversation.  The same idea, it seemed, had occurred to Mrs. Beecher, fortified by a remark from the Lady’s Journal that an internal intellectual life was the surest method by which a woman could preserve her youth.  She turned up the article—­for the conversation occurred in her drawing-room—­and she read extracts from it.  ‘Shakespeare as a Cosmetic’ was the title.  Maude was very much struck, and before they separated they had formed themselves into a Literary Society which should meet and discuss classical authors every Wednesday afternoon at each other’s houses.  That one hour of concentrated thought and lofty impulse should give a dignity and a tone to the whole dull provincial week.

What should they read?  It was well that they should decide it before they separated, so as to start fair upon the next Wednesday.  Maude suggested Shakespeare, but Mrs. Hunt Mortimer thought that a good deal of it was improper.

‘Does it matter?’ said Mrs. Beecher.  ‘We are all married.’

‘Still I don’t think it would be quite nice,’ said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer.  She belonged to the extreme right on matters of propriety.

‘But surely Mr. Bowdler made Shakespeare quite respectable,’ Mrs. Beecher argued.

’He did his work very carelessly.  He left in much that might be dispensed with, and he omitted a good deal which was quite innocent.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I once got two copies and read all the omissions.’

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Maude mischievously.

‘Because I wanted to make sure that they had been omitted,’ said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer severely.

Mrs. Beecher stooped and picked an invisible hairpin out of the rug.  Mrs. Hunt Mortimer continued.