It is an accepted rule that a gift is enhanced if it comes in the nature of a surprise.

The great question was not settled exclusively by Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker.

“You must,” said Alfred to his wife in the sanctity of their sleeping apartment, “find out what Maudie would like to have for her wedding present from us. I wouldn’t buy her ‘a pig in a poke,’ she’ll have too many of such articles, and it is important that she should have something from us that she really wants.”

“The question is,” said Regina to her lord, “what your ideas are on the subject.”

“No, my dear Queenie, my ideas will not make the least difference,” he returned, as he carefully examined one side of his respectable face to see if he had scraped it sufficiently clean. “I can afford, my dear Queenie, to give you a free hand in this matter. I only stipulate that it shall be something that Maudie wants—really wants. A grand piano?”

“Not a grand piano,” said Regina. “Mr. Marksby’s rich aunt is giving them that.”

“Bless me! I didn’t know they had a rich aunt. I thought Mr. Marksby had made all the money in the family. Well, there are plenty of things to make a choice of, silver for the table, furniture for the drawing-room, a brougham—anything else that she likes and that you like.”

“Well, I will have a little chat with Julia,” said Regina, with that rapt air of contemplation which was all her own. “Julia is a girl with ideas, Julia is far removed from the commonplace, Julia is a genius.”

“Well,” said Alfred Whittaker, “I don’t know that it takes much genius to choose a wedding present.”

“In a sense, dear Alfie, in a sense. But there is one question, dearest, that you must decide. How much is our wedding present to cost?”

“Well,” said Alfred, as he gave his face a final rub with the towel, “thank God I am able to give a hundred pounds for my girl’s wedding present, to give her a decent trousseau and to give her a decent dot. What you like to add to that is your own affair. There, now,” he said, as he threw the towel on the rail by the washstand, “I can’t waste another moment, I must get my tub, charming as your conversation always is.”

He whisked out of the room, a quaint figure enough in his demi-toilette. But Regina saw nothing quaint about her lord and master. “A handsome man with a presence,” was her usual description of him. But there are moments when the state of being which we describe as “a presence” has its grotesque aspects, and surely the flight to the bathroom is one of them. Mrs. Whittaker might have been the little blind god herself for all she saw of the grotesque in her noble Alfred.

“A hundred pounds,” she murmured, stopping in the process of arranging her hair for the day in order to rest the end of her hair brush on the edge of the toilet-table, and gazing at herself fixedly in the glass. “A hundred pounds! And, thank goodness, I can if need be put a hundred pounds of my own to it; I have only two darlings. I must consult Julia.”

Mrs. Whittaker took the earliest opportunity of a chat with her younger flower. It was not many minutes after Alfred Whittaker had departed for his office that a maid-servant came running across from Ingleside with a message to the effect that three large parcels had come for the bride, as she was affectionately called on both sides of the road, and would Miss Maudie please come across and open them, as the young ladies were dying to know what they contained. So Maudie disappeared in the direction of Ingleside, and Mrs. Whittaker seized the opportunity of broaching the important subject that was uppermost in her mind to Julia.

“Don’t go away, Julia,” she said, almost nervously.

“Yes, mother darling, what is the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter. But I want to consult you.”

“Oh,” said Julia, with a little air of conscious pride, “and what do you want to consult me about?”

“It is about our present—your father’s and mine.”

“I should ask Maudie herself.”

“No, your father wants it to be a surprise, quite a surprise. I thought if you knew, or could find out something she really wants, I could go to town and meet your father and get it settled.”

“What is daddy’s idea?”

“Your father’s idea is a grand piano, but Mr. Marksby’s aunt is giving them that.”

“Well, they don’t want two,” said Julia, sensibly. “The employees are giving them table silver, and the directors are giving them three silver bowls. If I were you I should give Maudie diamond earrings.”

“You think she would like them?”

“Yes, dear mother; every woman who has had her ears pierced likes diamond earrings.”

“What sort of diamond earrings?”

“Oh,” said Julia, “there can be no doubt the sort. Have the biggest single stones that you can squeeze out of the money.”

So the great question was settled, and a day or two later Mrs. Whittaker and Julia went up to town and lunched with the noble Alfred. They lunched at a very cosy little restaurant not a thousand yards from Charing Cross. A spoonful of white soup, a scrap of salmon, a serve of chicken stewed in the French fashion in the pot, and some asparagus, washed down by some excellent white wine, and followed by a black coffee and a liqueur, made the trio very much inclined to look on the rosy side of life. Then they got into a hansom, Julia sitting bodkin-wise, and drove off to the jeweler’s at which Mrs. Whittaker had decided that they would buy Maudie’s earrings. Their choice fell upon a pair which the shopman described as “fit for an empress.” They were not vulgarly large, but they were of the purest water, and of the most dazzling brilliance.

“You think,” said Mrs. Whittaker to Julia, “you think that Maudie would like these better than the larger ones?”

“Oh yes, mother, there’s no comparison. The big ones don’t look better than paste; these are unmistakably the real thing.”

“It is a pleasure to sell diamonds to so good a judge,” said the gentleman who was attending to them.

“I should have thought,” said Alfred Whittaker, in his most prosaic manner, “that as long as you sold your goods it would not matter to whom you sold them.”

“Excuse me, sir, that is where you make a mistake. We have a lady customer—she is a duchess—who frequently brings her jewels to be cleaned. She says her maid is a child at jewel-cleaning. It is not our business to say to the contrary, but that lady kills every diamond in her possession.”

“How kills?” said Julia.

“I cannot say, madam. Something in her magnetism causes the stones to look dead and slatey. The stones that she has had in her possession and worn continually for the last twenty years are not now worth a twentieth part of what was originally paid for them—all the fire has gone out of them. Whether they would recover themselves by being worn by a magnetic wearer I do not know. We have a young lady here in our establishment of quite radiant magnetism. She does no work, but gets a good salary and simply remains here and occupies herself as she likes and wears certain jewels a certain number of times. Sometimes when that particular lady—the duchess—is anxious to make a great appearance on some special occasion, we have her best stones for a month or even longer. This young lady of ours wears them all day long, and I can assure you it is an odd sight to see her with her two hands covered with rings, even her thumbs, her arms loaded with bracelets, one diamond necklace worn in the ordinary way, and another one worn over her shoulders.”

“And the diamonds recover their color?”

“Oh yes, madam, but these are only the stones that her Grace wears occasionally. I have been told,” he went on, “that their brilliance never lasts with her, and that long before the Drawing-room, or whatever the function may be, is over, they look as if they had been black-leaded. You can quite understand, sir,” he said, turning to Alfred Whittaker, “that it is positive pain to me to sell any of our best diamonds to such a wearer.”

“Well,” said Alfred, “the lady who is going to wear these earrings will never, I think, trouble you in the same way.”

“Oh no!” said Julia.

And then, somehow, the idea was born that Alfred Whittaker should give a little trifle of remembrance to Regina and their daughter. The little trifle of remembrance consisted of a very handsome turquoise ring for the mother and a very smart bangle for the girl.

“I had no idea, dear daddy,” said Julia, “of your buying me anything to-day. I have been wanting one of these bangles for, oh! such a long time.”

“And you never breathed it!” said Regina.

“I never thought of it,” said Julia; “but I am all the more delighted because I did not think of anything for myself.”

Then they departed carrying with them the lovely earrings which Maudie was to wear in remembrance of home as long as she should live.

“They know you in that shop, daddy,” said Julia, as they walked back toward Piccadilly.

“Oh yes, I have gone there for years; but how do you know that they knew me?”

“Oh—from the way they said ‘good day’ to you when you went in, and then you brought the earrings away with you and only paid for them by cheque—to say nothing of my beautiful bangle and mother’s ring.”

At this Alfred Whittaker laughed and said that being known at shops like this was one of the advantages of having a solid business behind one. Then they looked into one or two windows, and Mrs. Whittaker beguiled Alfred into a certain lace shop under the excuse that she was going to wear a lace garment at the wedding and that she wanted him to help her to choose it. Then they went to some very smart tea-rooms and refreshed themselves after the usual manner of five o’clock, and then they went home to Ye Dene, where they found Maudie, who had just come in, struggling with a perfect avalanche of presents.

“Where did you get that heart?” said Julia, looking fixedly at her sister.

Maudie’s hand, the one with the diamonds on it, touched the jewel. “Oh, my heart,” she said in her soft, cooing voice. “Harry has been over, he brought it from town—he wants me to wear it always. See, it’s got a little miniature of him at the back. He thought I should like to have it to be married in—just his heart, you know—because I had decided not to wear my necklace, or—my—er—fender.”

“A very pretty idea,” said Regina, beaming proudly upon the bride-elect, with an expression as if the thought had emanated from her brain instead of that of the bridegroom-to-be. “We have come from town, your father and I, and we have brought you a present.”

“Oh! you darlings! What have you brought me? But I know it is something nice.”

“It’s not very big,” said her father, producing the little packet from his waistcoat pocket, “but we hope you will like it all the same.”

“Oh, a ring,” cried Maudie, as she caught sight of the box. “I love rings more than anything else, and it is so sweet and kind of you to remember my little tastes, and to give me something that I can carry about with me always when I am not living here any more.”

Regina looked hard out of the window. In spite of her pride at her girl’s approaching marriage, it was a bitter wrench to her to think that she soon would have only one child in the home nest. Indeed, she looked forward further still to the time when she and Alfred would be Darby and Joan, with no young life to disturb the serenity of their daily round. It was the voice of Julia which brought her back to earth again.

“Now come, don’t stand there rhapsodizing about it, but open your parcel, old lady, and see what luck will send you,” she said to her sister. “I am sure Harry has given you rings enough. You don’t credit mother and father with over-much sense when you think they would give you something of which Harry has already given you a dozen.”

At this moment Maudie gave a faint scream. “Oh, you darlings! you darlings! I never thought of this; I don’t know which of you to kiss first. Oh, oh, what will Harry say? Oh! Julia, you had a hand in this. Single stone earrings! Oh, they are too good for me.”

“Why should you say they are too good for you?” said Regina. “Nothing is too good for me to give my daughter.”

“But you were right in one thing,” said Julia, as Maudie slipped one of the sparkling stones from its nest of white velvet, and insinuated the gold ring into her ear, “they have given you something that you can wear every day.”