‘Upon my word,’ said Peter, ‘I have seldom heard an after-dinner speech more remarkable for brevity and-all things considered-propriety.’

‘You’ll have to reply to it, Peter.’

‘I am no orator as Bunter is, but I’ll try… Am I mistaken, by the way. in imagining that that oil-stove is stinking to heaven?’

‘It’s smoking, at any rate,’ said Harriet, ‘like nothing on earth.’

Bunter, whose back was towards it, got up in alarm.

‘I fear, my lord,’ he observed, after some minutes of silent struggle, ‘that some catastrophe has occurred to the burner.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Peter.

The ensuing struggle was neither silent nor successful

‘Turn the blasted thing out and take it away,’ said Peter at length. He came back to the table, his appearance in no way improved by several long smears from the oily smuts which were now falling in every part of the room. ‘Under the present conditions, I can only say, Bunter, in reply to your good wishes for our welfare, that my wife and I thank you sincerely and shall hope that they may be fulfilled in every particular. For myself, I should like to add that any man is rich in friends who has a good wife and a good servant, and I hope I may be dead, as I shall certainly be damned, before I give either of you cause to leave me (as they say) for another. Bunter, your health-and may heaven send her ladyship and you fortitude to endure me, so long as all shall live. I may as well warn you that I for one am firmly resolved to live as long as I possibly can.’

‘To which,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘always excepting the fortitude as being unnecessary, I should wish-if the expression may be permitted-to observe. Amen.’

Here everybody shook hands, and there was a pause, broken by Mr Bunter’s saying, with slightly self-conscious haste, that he thought he had better attend to the bedroom fire.

‘And in the meantime,’ said Peter, ‘we can have a final cigarette over the Beatrice in the sittingroom. I suppose, by the way, Beatrice is capable of heating us a little washing water?’

‘No doubt of it, my lord,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘always supposing that one could find a new wick for it. The present wick appears, I regret to say, inadequate.’

‘Oh!’ said Peter, a little blankly. And indeed, when they reached the sittingroom, Beatrice was seen to be at her last expiring blue glimmer.

‘You must see what you can do with the bedroom fire,’ was Harriet’s suggestion.

‘Very good, my lady.’

‘At any rate,’ said Peter, lighting the cigarettes, ‘the matches still seem to strike on the box; all the laws of Nature have not been suspended for our confusion. We will muffle ourselves in overcoats and proceed to keep each other warm in the accepted manner of benighted travellers in a snow-bound country. “If I were on Greenland’s coast,” and all that. Not that I see any prospect of a six-months’ night; I wish I did; it is already past midnight.’

Bunter vanished upstairs, kettle in hand.

‘If,’ said her ladyship, a few minutes later, ‘you would remove that contraption from your eye, I could clean the bridge of your nose. Are you sorry we didn’t go to Paris or Mentone after all?’

‘No, definitely not. There is a solid reality about this. It’s convincing, somehow.’

‘It’s beginning to convince me, Peter. Such a series of domestic accidents could only happen to married people. There’s none of that artificial honeymoon glitter that prevents people from discovering each other’s real characters. You stand the test of tribulation remarkably well. It’s very encouraging.’

‘Thank you-but I really don’t know that there’s a great deal to complain of. I’ve got you, that’s the chief thing, and food and fire of sorts, and a roof over my head. What more could any man want?-Besides, I should hate to have missed Bunter’s speech and Mrs Ruddle’s conversation-and even Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine adds a distinct flavour to life. I might, perhaps, have preferred rather more hot water and less oil about my person. Not that there is anything essentially effeminate about paraffin-but I disapprove on principle of perfumes for men.’

‘It’s a nice, clean smell.’ said his wife, soothingly, ‘much more original than all the powders of the merchant. And I expect Bunter will manage to get it off you.’

‘I hope so,’ said Peter. He remembered that it had once been said of ‘ce blond cadet de famille ducale anglaise’ said, too, by a lady who had every opportunity of judging-that ‘il prenait son lit en Grand Monarque et s’y demenait en Grand Turc.’ The Fates, it seemed, had determined to strip him of every vanity save one. Let them. He could fight this battle naked. He laughed suddenly.

‘Enfin, du courage! Embrasse-moi, cherie. Je trouverai quandmeme le moyen de te faire plaisir. Hein? tu veux? dis donc!

‘Je veux bien.’

‘Dearest!’

‘Oh, Peter!’

‘I’m sorry-did I hurt you?’

‘No. Yes. Kiss me again.’

It was at some point during the next five minutes that Peter was heard to murmur, ‘Not faint Canaries but ambrosial’; and it is symptomatic of Harriet’s state of mind that at the time she vaguely connected the faint canaries with the shabby tigers-only tracing the quotation to its source some ten days later.

Bunter came downstairs. In one hand he held a small and steaming jug, and in the other a case of razors and a spongebag. A bath-towel and a pair of pyjamas hung from his arm, together with a silk dressing-gown.

“The fire in the bedroom is drawing satisfactorily. I have contrived to heat a small quantity of water for your ladyship’s use.’

His master looked apprehensively. ‘But what to me, my love, but what to me?’

Bunter made no verbal reply, but his glance in the direction of the kitchen was eloquent. Peter looked thoughtfully at his own finger-nails and shuddered. ‘Lady,’ said he, ‘get you to bed and leave me to my destiny.’

The wood upon the hearth was flaring cheerfully, and the water, what there was of it, was boiling. The two brass candlesticks bore their flaming ministers bravely, one on either side of the mirror. The big four-poster, with its patchwork quilt of faded blues and scarlets and its chip’- hangings dimmed by age and laundering, had, against the pale, plastered walls, a dignified air as though of exiled royalty. Harriet, warm and powdered and free at last from the smell of soot, paused with the hair-brush in her hand to wonder what was happening to Peter. She slipped across the chill dark of the dressing-room, opened the farther door, and listened. From somewhere far below came an ominous clank of iron, followed by a loud yelp and a burst of half-suffocated laughter.

‘Poor darling!’ said Harriet.

She put out the bedroom candles. The sheets, worn thin by age, were of fine linen, and somewhere in the room there was a scent of lavender… Jordan river… A branch broke and fell upon the hearth in a shower of sparks, and the tall shadows danced across the ceiling.

The door-latch clicked, and her husband sidled apologetically through. His air of chastened triumph made her chuckle, though her blood was thumping erratically and something seemed to have happened to her breath. He dropped on his knees beside her.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, his voice shaken between passion and laughter, ‘take your bridegroom. Quite clean and not the least paraffiny, but dreadfully damp and cold. Scrubbed like a puppy under the scullery pump!’

Dear Peter!’(‘… en Grand Monarque…’)

‘I think,’ he went on, rapidly and almost indistinguishably, ‘I think Bunter was enjoying himself. I have set him to clean the black beetles out of the copper. What does it matter?

What does anything matter? We are here. Laugh, lover, laugh. This is the end of the journey and the beginning of all delight.’

Mr Mervyn Bunter, having chased away the beetles, filled the copper and laid the fire ready for lighting, wrapped himself up in two great-coats and a rug and disposed himself comfortably in a couple of arm-chairs. But he did not sleep at once. Though not precisely anxious, he was filled with a kindly concern. He had (with what exertions!) brought his favourite up to the tape and must leave him now to make the running, but no respect for the proprieties could prevent his sympathetic imagination from following the cherished creature every step of the way. With a slight sigh he drew the candle towards him, took out a fountain-pen and a writing-pad, and began a letter to his mother. The performance of this filial duty might, he thought, serve to calm his mind.