as it happened, close at hand. “My God Shel,” she wired; “life literature Greene toady—” here she dropped into a cipher language which they had invented between them so that a whole spiritual state of the utmost complexity might be conveyed in a word or two without the telegraph clerk being any the wiser, and added the words “Rattigan Glumphoboo,” which summed it up precisely. For not only had the events of the morning made a deep impression on her, but it cannot have escaped the reader’s attention that Orlando was growing up—which is not necessarily growing better—and “Rattigan Glumphoboo” described a very complicated spiritual state—which if the reader puts all his intelligence at our service he may discover for himself.
There could be no answer to her telegram for some hours; indeed, it was probable, she thought, glancing at the sky, where the upper clouds raced swiftly past, that there was a gale at Cape Horn, so that her husband would be at the masthead, as likely as not, or cutting away some tattered spar, or even alone in a boat with a biscuit. And so, leaving the post office, she turned to beguile herself into the next shop, which was a shop so common in our day that it needs no description, yet, to her eyes, strange in