The recent fashion of having one's pet emu coloured to match one's frock is dying out, and armadilloes with gilded trotters are becoming the vogue.
"Very well," said the lady of the house, "don't let's do it. Nobody can force us to go to the seaside if we don't want to."
"It's too late," I said, "to begin to agree with me now."
"It's never too late to realise how reasonable you are."
"Yes, it is. The agreement is signed; half the rent has been paid; Sandstone House has got us by the legs, and, whether we like it or not, we've got to go there next week."
"We might try the effect of a death-bed repentance."
"No," I said, "we're dead already. We died when the blessed agreement was signed."
"Well, then, let's write and say our aunt from British Columbia is about to arrive here unexpectedly on a visit to us, and that sand and seaweed and prawns and star-fish are simply death to her. We can wind up with a strong appeal to the landlord's better nature. No true landlord can wish to be responsible for the death of anybody's British Columbian aunt."
"You're quite wrong," I said. "Landlords just revel in that kind of thing. Besides, he will not believe in our aunt. He will say that she is too thin."
"But the aunt I'm thinking of is stout and wheezy. She is a widow; her name is Aunt Wilhelmina; except ourselves there's nobody in the world left for her to cling to. No marine landlord can dare to separate us from Aunt Wilhelmina."
"It's no good," I said. "I'll admit that your Aunt Wilhelmina----"
"She's only mine by marriage, you know; but I love her like a daughter."
"I admit," I continued, "that Aunt-by-marriage Wilhelmina may some day be useful to us. We will put her by for another occasion. But she can't help us now."
"Well, go ahead yourself and suggest something, then."
"I could suggest a thousand things. Suppose we just pay the rest of the rent and don't go."
"The man," she said with conviction, "is mad."
"I thought you'd say that, and I know you'd say the same about any other suggestion of mine, so I shan't make any more."
"I never am. I'm reasonable, but, as usual, you'll realise it too late. Besides," I added, "it's you who've brought us into this fix."
"I?" she said with an air of wonder. "How can I have done that?"