"
"They were tidy enough till you began to throw them about," Ethel
pointed out.
"Confounded muck! it's only fit to be burnt," Lewisham remarked to the
universe, and pitched one viciously into the corner.
"Well, you tried to write one, anyhow," said Ethel, recalling a
certain "Mammoth" packet of note-paper that had come on an evil end
before Lewisham found his industrial level. This reminiscence always
irritated him exceedingly.
"Eh?" he said sharply.
"You tried to write one," repeated Ethel--a little unwillingly.
"You don't mean me to forget that."
"It's you reminded me."
He stared hostility for a space.
"Well, the things make a beastly litter anyhow; there isn't a tidy
corner anywhere in the room. There never is."
"That's just the sort of thing you always say."
"Well--_is_ there?"
"Yes, there is."
"_Where_?"
Ethel professed not to hear. But a devil had possession of Lewisham
for a time. "It isn't as though you had anything else to do," he
remarked, wounding dishonourably.
Ethel turned. "If I _put_ those things away," she said with tremendous
emphasis on the "_put_," "you'd only say I'd hidden them. What _is_
the good of trying to please you?"
The spirit of perversity suggested to Lewisham, "None apparently.
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