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o that when we really differed seriously we both knew exactly how to behave--we had played at quarrels so often. This quarrel was very serious, because it was about my shaving-brush and Chloe's handkerchief-case. There was a cupboard with a window--Chloe called it my dressing-room, and, at first, I humored her pretty fancy about it, and pretended that I could really see to shave in a glass that faced the window, although my shoulders, as I stood, cut off all light. But even then I used really to shave at Chloe's mirror after she had gone down to make the tea and boil the eggs--only I kept my shaving things in the embroidered vestments which my wife's affection provided and her fingers worked, and these lived in the "dressing-room." But the subterfuge presently seemed unworthy, and I found myself, in the ardor of a truthful nature, leaving my soapy brush on her toilet-table. Chloe called this untidiness, and worse, and urged that I had a dressing-room. Then I put the brush away. This had happened more than once.
On this memorable morning I had set up the pretty ivory shaving-brush, clean and pleasant with its white crown of lather, among her hair-brushes. Chloe came up just then to ask me whether I would have two or three eggs. Her entrance startled me. I cut myself slightly, but infuriatingly, and knocked the brush down. It fell on Chloe's handkerchief-case--pink satin, painted with rose and cupids, a present. Chloe snatched it up.
"You are horrid," she said. "Why don't you shave in your own dressing-room?"
"Whatever does it matter?" said I.
"My sachet's ruined," she said, dabbing at it with her pocket-handkerchief.
My chin was still bleeding.
"It's no use," she went on. "I spend all my time trying to keep the house nice, and you're always putting things down on things. You put your hateful fountain-pen down on the new drawn-linen table-centre only yesterday, and it's made a great ink mark. Yes, you did--when you were writing the check for the butcher."
I was ill-a