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POOR METAPHOR A 141 swallow it all with gusto, exclaiming, ' Good ! oh ! good ! Metaphora, she like that.' Poor Metaphora ! Though her mistress thought her half-witted she still was blest with illusions which for her made life beautiful. Her waist was like that of a barrel ; her smiling mouth went literally from ear to ear ; yet she was firmly persuaded that one of Colonel Falkland's secretaries—a good-looking young Englishman who was quite unconscious of her existence—had fallen in love with her one day when she opened the door for him. She was also per-suaded that whilst he was in love with her, Fraser, the cook of fifty, was equally in love with him ; and whenever Fraser thwarted any one of her wishes she set it down to the angry jealousy of a rival—or, as she herself expressed it, ' Fraser, she jelly me.' She had also her aspirations, which are even better things than illusions, her ' devotion to some-thing afar from the sphere of our sorrow.' The longing of her life was for a tight-fitting velvet dress, like one made for the Princess of Wales as she had seen it in the pages of a fashion-book. I have lingered over Metaphora not for her own sake only, but because from my introduction to her manifold excellences I date my insight into the comedy of Cyprian life. Colonel. Falkland, whose sense of humour was keen, by what seemed to • me an exceedingly natural transition went on from Metaphora to something even more naïve and ridi-culous ; and that is the something which passes for the

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