repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that’s absentee for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up at Lent to annoy her husband’s people, who are considerably lower than the angels, so to speak: with all these natural advantages⁠—she says her particular tint of bronze is a natural advantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage⁠—of course she has to send out for her afflictions, like those restaurants where they haven’t got a licence. The system has this advantage, that you can fit your unhappinesses in with your other engagements, whereas real worries have a way of arriving at mealtimes, and when you’re dressing, or other solemn moments. I knew a canary once that had been trying for months and years to hatch out a family, and everyone looked upon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of Delagoa Bay, which would be an annual loss to the press agencies if it ever came to pass; and one day the bird really did bring it off, in the middle of family prayers. I say the middle, but it was also the end: you can’t go on being thankful for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth very new canaries expect to be fed on.