"I set out intending to pay you just a friendly call," said Aunt Agatha, "but coming through the shop downstairs I saw such a lot of books that now I'm going to be a client too. You see they gave me an idea. I'd quite forgotten what a lot of books there are in the world and how little I know of them. But now I think I really must try to know more, so I want you to find me a nice girl to read to me. A girl with a clear voice, mind. From half-past five to seven, I think. No, there are often callers then. From half-past two till tea. No, that's when I sometimes like a nap. In the morning, then. No, one mustn't be read to in the morning. Well, my dear, let it be after lunch then, and if I fall asleep now and again it doesn't really matter. But she mustn't read what they call bed books."

"I wonder if you really want me to get the girl at all," said Ben.

"Of course I do, dear. It's terrible, it's disgraceful, to think of how little time I have left in which to learn anything of all those books, and I'm sure I couldn't read them to myself. Please get me a nice girl with a refined and distinct voice—so many girls have adenoids, don't you think?—to begin, not next week but the week after next. I'll spend next week in clearing up and getting ready for her.

"I suppose a girl is best," she continued after a moment's thought. "A young man wouldn't do? And yet I see such lots of advertisements in The Times Personal Column—how interesting that is and how sad sometimes!—I'm told that all those funny love letters, as they sound like, are really burglars' codes. Isn't that dreadful? But so every one says. But about this gentleman reader, there are such lots of advertisements from disabled officers wanting employment that perhaps one ought to consider one. I wonder how disabled officers read aloud, dear? Rather strong voices, I'm afraid, after so much drilling. I shouldn't like to be shouted at. Speaking of disabled officers, there's a rather nice lame man in the shop downstairs who showed me the way up. I suppose you've noticed him, dear? I think I must buy something from him on the way out, so as not to disappoint him. I wonder if he's got a Longfellow? I used to love Longfellow when I was a girl. That man getting another to propose for him and the other one being the real one—I haven't read it for years. We might begin with that.

"I hope someone is going to propose to you, my dear," Aunt Agatha went on. "So pretty and clever as you are, and so managing. People tell me this office is wonderfully run. I don't say I want you to marry the lame man downstairs, but I'm sure he's a gentleman, he has such a charming voice, and he's very good-looking. All but the leg. But legs aren't everything. What's that proverb about helping a lame man over a stile? How well you'd do that!

"I hope I'm not taking up your time, dear," Aunt Agatha continued; "but it's such a long while since you came to see me, and if I'm a nuisance you must make me pay half a crown, or whatever it is you charge for an hour's interview."

"What makes you think Mr. St. Quentin, the lame man downstairs, would make me a good husband?" Ben asked.

"I liked the look of him," said Aunt Agatha. "He looked kind and he's a gentleman. And I don't think it's a bad thing to be a book seller. Anyone may do that now, and he'd bring you home the new novels. Besides, it's a good thing to marry a man who's out of the house all day. I hate to see husbands in to lunch. All wrong. Home lunches are for women. Besides, my dear, there's an epidemic of marrying in the Staveley family and you'll catch it. You can't escape. Look at your father! And then I'm told that Alicia is engaged again to someone at Hove. A widower. I always said that Hove was too near Brighton. What is the proverb—'Marry in——' Oh, no, it's not Hove, it's Hastings: 'Marry in Hastings and repent at leisure.' How silly of me, but they're both on the South Coast.

"And poor Merrill, she came to see me the other day. All in black, the rouge, and looking so demure; but if I were one of those bookmakers who advertise in the papers that they never pay, I'd go so far as to bet a pony—it was a pony that your uncle always put on for me on the Derby favourite year after year, but how seldom the favourites win!—I'd bet a pony, whatever it means, that she's got another man in her eye. I could see him lurking there, the rascal, and not a clergyman this time, I'll be bound. I taxed her with it, and she said 'No' with such a pretty blush that there wasn't any doubt at all.

"And then there's Guy come all the way from India to marry your friend. It's wonderful, I think, that that engagement should have lasted so long, and he in India too, where men fall in love so easily. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but don't you believe it, my dear. There's a better proverb than that which says, 'Out of sight, out of mind.' But I can't admire Guy's constancy too much; he's a regular Don Juan; no, I don't mean that—Don Quixote; no, that other man, without fear and without reproach—Bayard. He's a regular Bayard. Not only to have gone all through his life in India loving her truly, but to have been faithful on the ship too! That's marvellous. I have the deepest respect for him. Indeed, my dear, I almost rank him with you.

"It shows how susceptible all you Staveleys are, and unless you're very careful, my dear, you'll fall too. You ought to be inoculated. Not that inoculation's any good. I never had such severe colds as after the doctor injected what he called my own culture into my arm. Culture—I didn't know I'd got any. I thought that was confined to the universities. But sneeze! You should have heard me. Perhaps you did—I'm only about a mile from Campden Hill. Well, dear, I'm a foolish old woman and I'm sure I've talked a lot of rubbish; but I'm very fond of you and you always do me good.

"And now I must be going. I'm so glad to have seen you in your place of business. And you'll get me a nice girl, won't you? We decided on a girl, didn't we? Yes, I think it must be a girl, because sometimes I should like her to take me to the pictures instead of reading. Reading can be rather tedious. And it would never do for me to go to the pictures with a disabled officer, would it? A nice girl, then. The week after next. Half-past two to four. Without adenoids."