Ashley Sterne

“ We are not on the telephone at home, so it is my part of the arrangement to ring up Moggridge's when I arrive at my office, and order what we want; that is, whenever I remember. But unfortunately I own the most impossible of head-pieces. It's all right to look at from the outside, but inside the valves leak, or else the taps run. Consequently it generally ends in Joan's writing a note when I return home in the evening. Thus I was not altogether surprised when, one morning after breakfast, Joan asked me to repeat her orders. I did so. "That’s not what I said!" cried Joan. ”

“ For reasons of economy we get all our household requisites from Moggridge's Stores in the Tottenham Court Road, where we have a deposit account. Joan once worked out that by shopping in this manner we saved ninepence-halfpenny every time we spent one pound four and fivepence (her arithmetic cannot cope with percentages) , besides having our goods delivered at the door by a motor van. This is a distinct score off our neighbours, who have to be content with theirs being brought round by a boy on a kind of three-wheeled Black-Maria. ”

“ I answered, "I may not have occasion to draw my handkerchief from its usual place, whereas I always have to take my hat off."
"How will you remember the quantity?"
"Well, fourteen pounds make one stone, don't they? Before I remember the hard thing is a piece of sugar I shall think it's a stone."
Joan sniffed contemptuously.
"Then there's my ring," she continued, "the diamond and sapphire one that I left for resetting. The estimate they promised has not come, and besides there's the———"
"Hold on a minute!" I cried. "Just tie a piece of cotton round my married finger." ”