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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tommy and Co., by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Tommy and Co.
+
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007  [eBook #2356]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOMMY AND CO.***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1904 Hutchinson and Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+TOMMY AND CO.
+
+
+BY
+JEROME K. JEROME
+AUTHOR OF
+"PAUL KELVER," "IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW,"
+"THREE MEN IN A BOAT," ETC.
+
+LONDON
+HUTCHINSON AND CO.
+PATERNOSTER ROW
+1904
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE FIRST--Peter Hope plans his Prospectus
+
+
+"Come in!" said Peter Hope.
+
+Peter Hope was tall and thin, clean-shaven but for a pair of side
+whiskers close-cropped and terminating just below the ear, with hair of
+the kind referred to by sympathetic barbers as "getting a little thin on
+the top, sir," but arranged with economy, that everywhere is poverty's
+true helpmate.  About Mr. Peter Hope's linen, which was white though
+somewhat frayed, there was a self-assertiveness that invariably arrested
+the attention of even the most casual observer.  Decidedly there was too
+much of it--its ostentation aided and abetted by the retiring nature of
+the cut-away coat, whose chief aim clearly was to slip off and disappear
+behind its owner's back.  "I'm a poor old thing," it seemed to say.  "I
+don't shine--or, rather, I shine too much among these up-to-date young
+modes.  I only hamper you.  You would be much more comfortable without
+me."  To persuade it to accompany him, its proprietor had to employ
+force, keeping fastened the lowest of its three buttons.  At every step,
+it struggled for its liberty.  Another characteristic of Peter's, linking
+him to the past, was his black silk cravat, secured by a couple of gold
+pins chained together.  Watching him as he now sat writing, his long legs
+encased in tightly strapped grey trousering, crossed beneath the table,
+the lamplight falling on his fresh-complexioned face, upon the shapely
+hand that steadied the half-written sheet, a stranger might have rubbed
+his eyes, wondering by what hallucination he thus found himself in
+presence seemingly of some young beau belonging to the early 'forties;
+but looking closer, would have seen the many wrinkles.
+
+"Come in!" repeated Mr. Peter Hope, raising his voice, but not his eyes.
+
+The door opened, and a small, white face, out of which gleamed a pair of
+bright, black eyes, was thrust sideways into the room.
+
+"Come in!" repeated Mr. Peter Hope for the third time.  "Who is it?"
+
+A hand not over clean, grasping a greasy cloth cap, appeared below the
+face.
+
+"Not ready yet," said Mr. Hope.  "Sit down and wait."
+
+The door opened wider, and the whole of the figure slid in and, closing
+the door behind it, sat itself down upon the extreme edge of the chair
+nearest.
+
+"Which are you--_Central News_ or _Courier_?" demanded Mr. Peter Hope,
+but without looking up from his work.
+
+The bright, black eyes, which had just commenced an examination of the
+room by a careful scrutiny of the smoke-grimed ceiling, descended and
+fixed themselves upon the one clearly defined bald patch upon his head
+that, had he been aware of it, would have troubled Mr. Peter Hope.  But
+the full, red lips beneath the turned-up nose remained motionless.
+
+That he had received no answer to his question appeared to have escaped
+the attention of Mr. Peter Hope.  The thin, white hand moved steadily to
+and fro across the paper.  Three more sheets were added to those upon the
+floor.  Then Mr. Peter Hope pushed back his chair and turned his gaze for
+the first time upon his visitor.
+
+To Peter Hope, hack journalist, long familiar with the genus Printer's
+Devil, small white faces, tangled hair, dirty hands, and greasy caps were
+common objects in the neighbourhood of that buried rivulet, the Fleet.
+But this was a new species.  Peter Hope sought his spectacles, found them
+after some trouble under a heap of newspapers, adjusted them upon his
+high, arched nose, leant forward, and looked long and up and down.
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Peter Hope.  "What is it?"
+
+The figure rose to its full height of five foot one and came forward
+slowly.
+
+Over a tight-fitting garibaldi of blue silk, excessively _decollete_, it
+wore what once had been a boy's pepper-and-salt jacket.  A worsted
+comforter wound round the neck still left a wide expanse of throat
+showing above the garibaldi.  Below the jacket fell a long, black skirt,
+the train of which had been looped up about the waist and fastened with a
+cricket-belt.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want?" asked Mr. Peter Hope.
+
+For answer, the figure, passing the greasy cap into its other hand,
+stooped down and, seizing the front of the long skirt, began to haul it
+up.
+
+"Don't do that!" said Mr. Peter Hope.  "I say, you know, you--"
+
+But by this time the skirt had practically disappeared, leaving to view a
+pair of much-patched trousers, diving into the right-hand pocket of which
+the dirty hand drew forth a folded paper, which, having opened and
+smoothed out, it laid upon the desk.
+
+Mr. Peter Hope pushed up his spectacles till they rested on his eyebrows,
+and read aloud--"'Steak and Kidney Pie, 4d.; Do. (large size), _6d._;
+Boiled Mutton--'"
+
+"That's where I've been for the last two weeks," said the
+figure,--"Hammond's Eating House!"
+
+The listener noted with surprise that the voice--though it told him as
+plainly as if he had risen and drawn aside the red rep curtains, that
+outside in Gough Square the yellow fog lay like the ghost of a dead
+sea--betrayed no Cockney accent, found no difficulty with its aitches.
+
+"You ask for Emma.  She'll say a good word for me.  She told me so."
+
+"But, my good--" Mr. Peter Hope, checking himself, sought again the
+assistance of his glasses.  The glasses being unable to decide the point,
+their owner had to put the question bluntly:
+
+"Are you a boy or a girl?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"You don't know!"
+
+"What's the difference?"
+
+Mr. Peter Hope stood up, and taking the strange figure by the shoulders,
+turned it round slowly twice, apparently under the impression that the
+process might afford to him some clue.  But it did not.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Tommy."
+
+"Tommy what?"
+
+"Anything you like.  I dunno.  I've had so many of 'em."
+
+"What do you want?  What have you come for?"
+
+"You're Mr. Hope, ain't you, second floor, 16, Gough Square?"
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"You want somebody to do for you?"
+
+"You mean a housekeeper!"
+
+"Didn't say anything about housekeeper.  Said you wanted somebody to do
+for you--cook and clean the place up.  Heard 'em talking about it in the
+shop this afternoon.  Old lady in green bonnet was asking Mother Hammond
+if she knew of anyone."
+
+"Mrs. Postwhistle--yes, I did ask her to look out for someone for me.
+Why, do you know of anyone?  Have you been sent by anybody?"
+
+"You don't want anything too 'laborate in the way o' cooking?  You was a
+simple old chap, so they said; not much trouble."
+
+"No--no.  I don't want much--someone clean and respectable.  But why
+couldn't she come herself?  Who is it?"
+
+"Well, what's wrong about me?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Peter Hope.
+
+"Why won't I do?  I can make beds and clean rooms--all that sort o'
+thing.  As for cooking, I've got a natural aptitude for it.  You ask
+Emma; she'll tell you.  You don't want nothing 'laborate?"
+
+"Elizabeth," said Mr. Peter Hope, as he crossed and, taking up the poker,
+proceeded to stir the fire, "are we awake or asleep?"
+
+Elizabeth thus appealed to, raised herself on her hind legs and dug her
+claws into her master's thigh.  Mr. Hope's trousers being thin, it was
+the most practical answer she could have given him.
+
+"Done a lot of looking after other people for their benefit," continued
+Tommy.  "Don't see why I shouldn't do it for my own."
+
+"My dear--I do wish I knew whether you were a boy or a girl.  Do you
+seriously suggest that I should engage you as my housekeeper?" asked Mr.
+Peter Hope, now upright with his back to the fire.
+
+"I'd do for you all right," persisted Tommy.  "You give me my grub and a
+shake-down and, say, sixpence a week, and I'll grumble less than most of
+'em."
+
+"Don't be ridiculous," said Mr. Peter Hope.
+
+"You won't try me?"
+
+"Of course not; you must be mad."
+
+"All right.  No harm done."  The dirty hand reached out towards the desk,
+and possessing itself again of Hammond's Bill of Fare, commenced the
+operations necessary for bearing it away in safety.
+
+"Here's a shilling for you," said Mr. Peter Hope.
+
+"Rather not," said Tommy.  "Thanks all the same."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Mr. Peter Hope.
+
+"Rather not," repeated Tommy.  "Never know where that sort of thing may
+lead you to."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Peter Hope, replacing the coin in his pocket.
+"Don't!"
+
+The figure moved towards the door.
+
+"Wait a minute.  Wait a minute," said Mr. Peter Hope irritably.
+
+The figure, with its hand upon the door, stood still.
+
+"Are you going back to Hammond's?"
+
+"No.  I've finished there.  Only took me on for a couple o' weeks, while
+one of the gals was ill.  She came back this morning."
+
+"Who are your people?"
+
+Tommy seemed puzzled.  "What d'ye mean?"
+
+"Well, whom do you live with?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You've got nobody to look after you--to take care of you?"
+
+"Take care of me!  D'ye think I'm a bloomin' kid?"
+
+"Then where are you going to now?"
+
+"Going?  Out."
+
+Peter Hope's irritation was growing.
+
+"I mean, where are you going to sleep?  Got any money for a lodging?"
+
+"Yes, I've got some money," answered Tommy.  "But I don't think much o'
+lodgings.  Not a particular nice class as you meet there.  I shall sleep
+out to-night.  'Tain't raining."
+
+Elizabeth uttered a piercing cry.
+
+"Serves you right!" growled Peter savagely.  "How can anyone help
+treading on you when you will get just between one's legs.  Told you of
+it a hundred times."
+
+The truth of the matter was that Peter was becoming very angry with
+himself.  For no reason whatever, as he told himself, his memory would
+persist in wandering to Ilford Cemetery, in a certain desolate corner of
+which lay a fragile little woman whose lungs had been but ill adapted to
+breathing London fogs; with, on the top of her, a still smaller and still
+more fragile mite of humanity that, in compliment to its only relative
+worth a penny-piece, had been christened Thomas--a name common enough in
+all conscience, as Peter had reminded himself more than once.  In the
+name of common sense, what had dead and buried Tommy Hope to do with this
+affair?  The whole thing was the veriest sentiment, and sentiment was Mr.
+Peter Hope's abomination.  Had he not penned articles innumerable
+pointing out its baneful influence upon the age?  Had he not always
+condemned it, wherever he had come across it in play or book?  Now and
+then the suspicion had crossed Peter's mind that, in spite of all this,
+he was somewhat of a sentimentalist himself--things had suggested this to
+him.  The fear had always made him savage.
+
+"You wait here till I come back," he growled, seizing the astonished
+Tommy by the worsted comforter and spinning it into the centre of the
+room.  "Sit down, and don't you dare to move."  And Peter went out and
+slammed the door behind him.
+
+"Bit off his chump, ain't he?" remarked Tommy to Elizabeth, as the sound
+of Peter's descending footsteps died away.  People had a way of
+addressing remarks to Elizabeth.  Something in her manner invited this.
+
+"Oh, well, it's all in the day's work," commented Tommy cheerfully, and
+sat down as bid.
+
+Five minutes passed, maybe ten.  Then Peter returned, accompanied by a
+large, restful lady, to whom surprise--one felt it instinctively--had
+always been, and always would remain, an unknown quantity.
+
+Tommy rose.
+
+"That's the--the article," explained Peter.
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle compressed her lips and slightly tossed her head.  It
+was the attitude of not ill-natured contempt from which she regarded most
+human affairs.
+
+"That's right," said Mrs. Postwhistle; "I remember seeing 'er
+there--leastways, it was an 'er right enough then.  What 'ave you done
+with your clothes?"
+
+"They weren't mine," explained Tommy.  "They were things what Mrs.
+Hammond had lent me."
+
+"Is that your own?" asked Mrs. Postwhistle, indicating the blue silk
+garibaldi.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What went with it?"
+
+"Tights.  They were too far gone."
+
+"What made you give up the tumbling business and go to Mrs. 'Ammond's?"
+
+"It gave me up.  Hurt myself."
+
+"Who were you with last?"
+
+"Martini troupe."
+
+"And before that?"
+
+"Oh! heaps of 'em."
+
+"Nobody ever told you whether you was a boy or a girl?"
+
+"Nobody as I'd care to believe.  Some of them called me the one, some of
+them the other.  It depended upon what was wanted."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle turned to Peter, who was jingling keys.
+
+"Well, there's the bed upstairs.  It's for you to decide."
+
+"What I don't want to do," explained Peter, sinking his voice to a
+confidential whisper, "is to make a fool of myself."
+
+"That's always a good rule," agreed Mrs. Postwhistle, "for those to whom
+it's possible."
+
+"Anyhow," said Peter, "one night can't do any harm.  To-morrow we can
+think what's to be done."
+
+"To-morrow" had always been Peter's lucky day.  At the mere mention of
+the magic date his spirits invariably rose.  He now turned upon Tommy a
+countenance from which all hesitation was banished.
+
+"Very well, Tommy," said Mr. Peter Hope, "you can sleep here to-night.  Go
+with Mrs. Postwhistle, and she'll show you your room."
+
+The black eyes shone.
+
+"You're going to give me a trial?"
+
+"We'll talk about all that to-morrow."  The black eyes clouded.
+
+"Look here.  I tell you straight, it ain't no good."
+
+"What do you mean?  What isn't any good?" demanded Peter.
+
+"You'll want to send me to prison."
+
+"To prison!"
+
+"Oh, yes.  You'll call it a school, I know.  You ain't the first that's
+tried that on.  It won't work."  The bright, black eyes were flashing
+passionately.  "I ain't done any harm.  I'm willing to work.  I can keep
+myself.  I always have.  What's it got to do with anybody else?"
+
+Had the bright, black eyes retained their expression of passionate
+defiance, Peter Hope might have retained his common sense.  Only Fate
+arranged that instead they should suddenly fill with wild tears.  And at
+sight of them Peter's common sense went out of the room disgusted, and
+there was born the history of many things.
+
+"Don't be silly," said Peter.  "You didn't understand.  Of course I'm
+going to give you a trial.  You're going to 'do' for me.  I merely meant
+that we'd leave the details till to-morrow.  Come, housekeepers don't
+cry."
+
+The little wet face looked up.
+
+"You mean it?  Honour bright?"
+
+"Honour bright.  Now go and wash yourself.  Then you shall get me my
+supper."
+
+The odd figure, still heaving from its paroxysm of sobs, stood up.
+
+"And I have my grub, my lodging, and sixpence a week?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I think that's a fair arrangement," agreed Mr. Peter Hope,
+considering.  "Don't you, Mrs. Postwhistle?"
+
+"With a frock--or a suit of trousers--thrown in," suggested Mrs.
+Postwhistle.  "It's generally done."
+
+"If it's the custom, certainly," agreed Mr. Peter Hope.  "Sixpence a week
+and clothes."
+
+And this time it was Peter that, in company with Elizabeth, sat waiting
+the return of Tommy.
+
+"I rather hope," said Peter, "it's a boy.  It was the fogs, you know.  If
+only I could have afforded to send him away!"
+
+Elizabeth looked thoughtful.  The door opened.
+
+"Ah! that's better, much better," said Mr. Peter Hope.  "'Pon my word,
+you look quite respectable."
+
+By the practical Mrs. Postwhistle a working agreement, benefiting both
+parties, had been arrived at with the long-trained skirt; while an ample
+shawl arranged with judgment disguised the nakedness that lay below.
+Peter, a fastidious gentleman, observed with satisfaction that the hands,
+now clean, had been well cared for.
+
+"Give me that cap," said Peter.  He threw it in the glowing fire.  It
+burned brightly, diffusing strange odours.
+
+"There's a travelling cap of mine hanging up in the passage.  You can
+wear that for the present.  Take this half-sovereign and get me some cold
+meat and beer for supper.  You'll find everything else you want in that
+sideboard or else in the kitchen.  Don't ask me a hundred questions, and
+don't make a noise," and Peter went back to his work.
+
+"Good idea, that half-sovereign," said Peter.  "Shan't be bothered with
+'Master Tommy' any more, don't expect.  Starting a nursery at our time of
+life.  Madness."  Peter's pen scratched and spluttered.  Elizabeth kept
+an eye upon the door.
+
+"Quarter of an hour," said Peter, looking at his watch.  "Told you so."
+The article on which Peter was now engaged appeared to be of a worrying
+nature.
+
+"Then why," said Peter, "why did he refuse that shilling?  Artfulness,"
+concluded Peter, "pure artfulness.  Elizabeth, old girl, we've got out of
+this business cheaply.  Good idea, that half-sovereign."  Peter gave vent
+to a chuckle that had the effect of alarming Elizabeth.
+
+But luck evidently was not with Peter that night.
+
+"Pingle's was sold out," explained Tommy, entering with parcels; "had to
+go to Bow's in Farringdon Street."
+
+"Oh!" said Peter, without looking up.
+
+Tommy passed through into the little kitchen behind.  Peter wrote on
+rapidly, making up for lost time.
+
+"Good!" murmured Peter, smiling to himself, "that's a neat phrase.  That
+ought to irritate them."
+
+Now, as he wrote, while with noiseless footsteps Tommy, unseen behind
+him, moved to and fro and in and out the little kitchen, there came to
+Peter Hope this very curious experience: it felt to him as if for a long
+time he had been ill--so ill as not even to have been aware of it--and
+that now he was beginning to be himself again; consciousness of things
+returning to him.  This solidly furnished, long, oak-panelled room with
+its air of old-world dignity and repose--this sober, kindly room in which
+for more than half his life he had lived and worked--why had he forgotten
+it?  It came forward greeting him with an amused smile, as of some old
+friend long parted from.  The faded photos, in stiff, wooden frames upon
+the chimney-piece, among them that of the fragile little woman with the
+unadaptable lungs.
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Peter Hope, pushing back his chair.  "It's
+thirty years ago.  How time does fly!  Why, let me see, I must be--"
+
+"D'you like it with a head on it?" demanded Tommy, who had been waiting
+patiently for signs.
+
+Peter shook himself awake and went to his supper.
+
+A bright idea occurred to Peter in the night.  "Of course; why didn't I
+think of it before?  Settle the question at once."  Peter fell into an
+easy sleep.
+
+"Tommy," said Peter, as he sat himself down to breakfast the next
+morning.  "By-the-by," asked Peter with a puzzled expression, putting
+down his cup, "what is this?"
+
+"Cauffee," informed him Tommy.  "You said cauffee."
+
+"Oh!" replied Peter.  "For the future, Tommy, if you don't mind, I will
+take tea of a morning."
+
+"All the same to me," explained the agreeable Tommy, "it's your
+breakfast."
+
+"What I was about to say," continued Peter, "was that you're not looking
+very well, Tommy."
+
+"I'm all right," asserted Tommy; "never nothing the matter with me."
+
+"Not that you know of, perhaps; but one can be in a very bad way, Tommy,
+without being aware of it.  I cannot have anyone about me that I am not
+sure is in thoroughly sound health."
+
+"If you mean you've changed your mind and want to get rid of me--" began
+Tommy, with its chin in the air.
+
+"I don't want any of your uppishness," snapped Peter, who had wound
+himself up for the occasion to a degree of assertiveness that surprised
+even himself.  "If you are a thoroughly strong and healthy person, as I
+think you are, I shall be very glad to retain your services.  But upon
+that point I must be satisfied.  It is the custom," explained Peter.  "It
+is always done in good families.  Run round to this address"--Peter wrote
+it upon a leaf of his notebook--"and ask Dr. Smith to come and see me
+before he begins his round.  You go at once, and don't let us have any
+argument."
+
+"That is the way to talk to that young person--clearly," said Peter to
+himself, listening to Tommy's footsteps dying down the stairs.
+
+Hearing the street-door slam, Peter stole into the kitchen and brewed
+himself a cup of coffee.
+
+Dr. Smith, who had commenced life as Herr Schmidt, but who in consequence
+of difference of opinion with his Government was now an Englishman with
+strong Tory prejudices, had but one sorrow: it was that strangers would
+mistake him for a foreigner.  He was short and stout, with bushy eyebrows
+and a grey moustache, and looked so fierce that children cried when they
+saw him, until he patted them on the head and addressed them as "mein
+leedle frent" in a voice so soft and tender that they had to leave off
+howling just to wonder where it came from.  He and Peter, who was a
+vehement Radical, had been cronies for many years, and had each an
+indulgent contempt for the other's understanding, tempered by a sincere
+affection for one another they would have found it difficult to account
+for.
+
+"What tink you is de matter wid de leedle wench?" demanded Dr. Smith,
+Peter having opened the case.  Peter glanced round the room.  The kitchen
+door was closed.
+
+"How do you know it's a wench?"
+
+The eyes beneath the bushy brows grew rounder.  "If id is not a wench,
+why dress it--"
+
+"Haven't dressed it," interrupted Peter.  "Just what I'm waiting to do--so
+soon as I know."
+
+And Peter recounted the events of the preceding evening.
+
+Tears gathered in the doctor's small, round eyes.  His absurd
+sentimentalism was the quality in his friend that most irritated Peter.
+
+"Poor leedle waif!" murmured the soft-hearted old gentleman.  "Id was de
+good Providence dat guided her--or him, whichever id be."
+
+"Providence be hanged!" snarled Peter.  "What was my Providence
+doing--landing me with a gutter-brat to look after?"
+
+"So like you Radicals," sneered the doctor, "to despise a fellow human
+creature just because id may not have been born in burble and fine
+linen."
+
+"I didn't send for you to argue politics," retorted Peter, controlling
+his indignation by an effort.  "I want you to tell me whether it's a boy
+or a girl, so that I may know what to do with it."
+
+"What mean you to do wid id?" inquired the doctor.
+
+"I don't know," confessed Peter.  "If it's a boy, as I rather think it
+is, maybe I'll be able to find it a place in one of the offices--after
+I've taught it a little civilisation."
+
+"And if id be a girl?"
+
+"How can it be a girl when it wears trousers?" demanded Peter.  "Why
+anticipate difficulties?"
+
+Peter, alone, paced to and fro the room, his hands behind his back, his
+ear on the alert to catch the slightest sound from above.
+
+"I do hope it is a boy," said Peter, glancing up.
+
+Peter's eyes rested on the photo of the fragile little woman gazing down
+at him from its stiff frame upon the chimney-piece.  Thirty years ago, in
+this same room, Peter had paced to and fro, his hands behind his back,
+his ear alert to catch the slightest sound from above, had said to
+himself the same words.
+
+"It's odd," mused Peter--"very odd indeed."
+
+The door opened.  The stout doctor, preceded at a little distance by his
+watch-chain, entered and closed the door behind him.
+
+"A very healthy child," said the doctor, "as fine a child as any one
+could wish to see.  A girl."
+
+The two old gentlemen looked at one another.  Elizabeth, possibly
+relieved in her mind, began to purr.
+
+"What am I to do with it?" demanded Peter.
+
+"A very awkward bosition for you," agreed the sympathetic doctor.
+
+"I was a fool!" declared Peter.
+
+"You haf no one here to look after de leedle wench when you are away,"
+pointed out the thoughtful doctor.
+
+"And from what I've seen of the imp," added Peter, "it will want some
+looking after."
+
+"I tink--I tink," said the helpful doctor, "I see a way out!"
+
+"What?"
+
+The doctor thrust his fierce face forward and tapped knowingly with his
+right forefinger the right side of his round nose.  "I will take charge
+of de leedle wench."
+
+"You?"
+
+"To me de case will not present de same difficulties.  I haf a
+housekeeper."
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Whateley."
+
+"She is a goot woman when you know her," explained the doctor.  "She only
+wants managing."
+
+"Pooh!" ejaculated Peter.
+
+"Why do you say dat?" inquired the doctor.
+
+"You! bringing up a headstrong girl.  The idea!"
+
+"I should be kind, but firm."
+
+"You don't know her."
+
+"How long haf you known her?"
+
+"Anyhow, I'm not a soft-hearted sentimentalist that would just ruin the
+child."
+
+"Girls are not boys," persisted the doctor; "dey want different
+treatment."
+
+"Well, I'm not a brute!" snarled Peter.  "Besides, suppose she turns out
+rubbish!  What do you know about her?"
+
+"I take my chance," agreed the generous doctor.
+
+"It wouldn't be fair," retorted honest Peter.
+
+"Tink it over," said the doctor.  "A place is never home widout de leedle
+feet.  We Englishmen love de home.  You are different.  You haf no
+sentiment."
+
+"I cannot help feeling," explained Peter, "a sense of duty in this
+matter.  The child came to me.  It is as if this thing had been laid upon
+me."
+
+"If you look upon id dat way, Peter," sighed the doctor.
+
+"With sentiment," went on Peter, "I have nothing to do; but duty--duty is
+quite another thing."  Peter, feeling himself an ancient Roman, thanked
+the doctor and shook hands with him.
+
+Tommy, summoned, appeared.
+
+"The doctor, Tommy," said Peter, without looking up from his writing,
+"gives a very satisfactory account of you.  So you can stop."
+
+"Told you so," returned Tommy.  "Might have saved your money."
+
+"But we shall have to find you another name."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"If you are to be a housekeeper, you must be a girl."
+
+"Don't like girls."
+
+"Can't say I think much of them myself, Tommy.  We must make the best of
+it.  To begin with, we must get you proper clothes."
+
+"Hate skirts.  They hamper you."
+
+"Tommy," said Peter severely, "don't argue."
+
+"Pointing out facts ain't arguing," argued Tommy.  "They do hamper you.
+You try 'em."
+
+The clothes were quickly made, and after a while they came to fit; but
+the name proved more difficult of adjustment.  A sweet-faced, laughing
+lady, known to fame by a title respectable and orthodox, appears an
+honoured guest to-day at many a literary gathering.  But the old fellows,
+pressing round, still call her "Tommy."
+
+The week's trial came to an end.  Peter, whose digestion was delicate,
+had had a happy thought.
+
+"What I propose, Tommy--I mean Jane," said Peter, "is that we should get
+in a woman to do just the mere cooking.  That will give you more time
+to--to attend to other things, Tommy--Jane, I mean."
+
+"What other things?" chin in the air.
+
+"The--the keeping of the rooms in order, Tommy.  The--the dusting."
+
+"Don't want twenty-four hours a day to dust four rooms."
+
+"Then there are messages, Tommy.  It would be a great advantage to me to
+have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering
+with the housework."
+
+"What are you driving at?" demanded Tommy.  "Why, I don't have half
+enough to do as it is.  I can do all--"
+
+Peter put his foot down.  "When I say a thing, I mean a thing.  The
+sooner you understand that, the better.  How dare you argue with me!
+Fiddle-de-dee!"  For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even
+stronger, so determined was he feeling.
+
+Tommy without another word left the room.  Peter looked at Elizabeth and
+winked.
+
+Poor Peter!  His triumph was short-lived.  Five minutes later, Tommy
+returned, clad in the long, black skirt, supported by the cricket belt,
+the blue garibaldi cut _decollete_, the pepper-and-salt jacket, the
+worsted comforter, the red lips very tightly pressed, the long lashes
+over the black eyes moving very rapidly.
+
+"Tommy" (severely), "what is this tomfoolery?"
+
+"I understand.  I ain't no good to you.  Thanks for giving me a trial.  My
+fault."
+
+"Tommy" (less severely), "don't be an idiot."
+
+"Ain't an idiot.  'Twas Emma.  Told me I was good at cooking.  Said I'd
+got an aptitude for it.  She meant well."
+
+"Tommy" (no trace of severity), "sit down.  Emma was quite right.  Your
+cooking is--is promising.  As Emma puts it, you have aptitude.
+Your--perseverance, your hopefulness proves it."
+
+"Then why d'ye want to get someone else in to do it?"
+
+If Peter could have answered truthfully!  If Peter could have replied:
+
+"My dear, I am a lonely old gentleman.  I did not know it until--until
+the other day.  Now I cannot forget it again.  Wife and child died many
+years ago.  I was poor, or I might have saved them.  That made me hard.
+The clock of my life stood still.  I hid away the key.  I did not want to
+think.  You crept to me out of the cruel fog, awakened old dreams.  Do
+not go away any more"--perhaps Tommy, in spite of her fierce
+independence, would have consented to be useful; and thus Peter might
+have gained his end at less cost of indigestion.  But the penalty for
+being an anti-sentimentalist is that you must not talk like this even to
+yourself.  So Peter had to cast about for other methods.
+
+"Why shouldn't I keep two servants if I like?"  It did seem hard on the
+old gentleman.
+
+"What's the sense of paying two to do the work of one?  You would only be
+keeping me on out of charity."  The black eyes flashed.  "I ain't a
+beggar."
+
+"And you really think, Tommy--I should say Jane, you can manage the--the
+whole of it?  You won't mind being sent on a message, perhaps in the very
+middle of your cooking.  It was that I was thinking of, Tommy--some cooks
+would."
+
+"You go easy," advised him Tommy, "till I complain of having too much to
+do."
+
+Peter returned to his desk.  Elizabeth looked up.  It seemed to Peter
+that Elizabeth winked.
+
+The fortnight that followed was a period of trouble to Peter, for Tommy,
+her suspicions having been aroused, was sceptical of "business" demanding
+that Peter should dine with this man at the club, lunch with this editor
+at the Cheshire Cheese.  At once the chin would go up into the air, the
+black eyes cloud threateningly.  Peter, an unmarried man for thirty
+years, lacking experience, would under cross-examination contradict
+himself, become confused, break down over essential points.
+
+"Really," grumbled Peter to himself one evening, sawing at a mutton chop,
+"really there's no other word for it--I'm henpecked."
+
+Peter that day had looked forward to a little dinner at a favourite
+restaurant, with his "dear old friend Blenkinsopp, a bit of a gourmet,
+Tommy--that means a man who likes what you would call elaborate
+cooking!"--forgetful at the moment that he had used up "Blenkinsopp"
+three days before for a farewell supper, "Blenkinsopp" having to set out
+the next morning for Egypt.  Peter was not facile at invention.  Names in
+particular had always been a difficulty to him.
+
+"I like a spirit of independence," continued Peter to himself.  "Wish she
+hadn't quite so much of it.  Wonder where she got it from."
+
+The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to admit.
+For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing more and
+more indispensable to Peter.  Tommy was the first audience that for
+thirty years had laughed at Peter's jokes; Tommy was the first public
+that for thirty years had been convinced that Peter was the most
+brilliant journalist in Fleet Street; Tommy was the first anxiety that
+for thirty years had rendered it needful that Peter each night should
+mount stealthily the creaking stairs, steal with shaded candle to a
+bedside.  If only Tommy wouldn't "do" for him!  If only she could be
+persuaded to "do" something else.
+
+Another happy thought occurred to Peter.
+
+"Tommy--I mean Jane," said Peter, "I know what I'll do with you."
+
+"What's the game now?"
+
+"I'll make a journalist of you."
+
+"Don't talk rot."
+
+"It isn't rot.  Besides, I won't have you answer me like that.  As a
+Devil--that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps
+a journalist to do his work--you would be invaluable to me.  It would pay
+me, Tommy--pay me very handsomely.  I should make money out of you."
+
+This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood.  Peter, with
+secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.
+
+"I did help a chap to sell papers, once," remembered Tommy; "he said I
+was fly at it."
+
+"I told you so," exclaimed Peter triumphantly.  "The methods are
+different, but the instinct required is the same.  We will get a woman in
+to relieve you of the housework."
+
+The chin shot up into the air.
+
+"I could do it in my spare time."
+
+"You see, Tommy, I should want you to go about with me--to be always with
+me."
+
+"Better try me first.  Maybe you're making an error."
+
+Peter was learning the wisdom of the serpent.
+
+"Quite right, Tommy.  We will first see what you can do.  Perhaps, after
+all, it may turn out that you are better as a cook."  In his heart Peter
+doubted this.
+
+But the seed had fallen upon good ground.  It was Tommy herself that
+manoeuvred her first essay in journalism.  A great man had come to
+London--was staying in apartments especially prepared for him in St.
+James's Palace.  Said every journalist in London to himself: "If I could
+obtain an interview with this Big Man, what a big thing it would be for
+me!"  For a week past, Peter had carried everywhere about with him a
+paper headed: "Interview of Our Special Correspondent with Prince Blank,"
+questions down left-hand column, very narrow; space for answers right-
+hand side, very wide.  But the Big Man was experienced.
+
+"I wonder," said Peter, spreading the neatly folded paper on the desk
+before him, "I wonder if there can be any way of getting at him--any
+dodge or trick, any piece of low cunning, any plausible lie that I
+haven't thought of."
+
+"Old Man Martin--called himself Martini--was just such another,"
+commented Tommy.  "Come pay time, Saturday afternoon, you just couldn't
+get at him--simply wasn't any way.  I was a bit too good for him once,
+though," remembered Tommy, with a touch of pride in her voice; "got half
+a quid out of him that time.  It did surprise him."
+
+"No," communed Peter to himself aloud, "I don't honestly think there can
+be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven't tried."  Peter
+flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping
+his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist,
+whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was to
+avoid publicity, if possible.
+
+Tommy, as soon as Peter's back was turned, fished it out again.
+
+An hour later in the fog around St. James's Palace stood an Imp, clad in
+patched trousers and a pepper-and-salt jacket turned up about the neck,
+gazing with admiring eyes upon the sentry.
+
+"Now, then, young seventeen-and-sixpence the soot," said the sentry,
+"what do you want?"
+
+"Makes you a bit anxious, don't it," suggested the Imp, "having a big pot
+like him to look after?"
+
+"Does get a bit on yer mind, if yer thinks about it," agreed the sentry.
+
+"How do you find him to talk to, like?"
+
+"Well," said the sentry, bringing his right leg into action for the
+purpose of relieving his left, "ain't 'ad much to do with 'im myself, not
+person'ly, as yet.  Oh, 'e ain't a bad sort when yer know 'im."
+
+"That's his shake-down, ain't it?" asked the Imp, "where the lights are."
+
+"That's it," admitted sentry.  "You ain't an Anarchist?  Tell me if you
+are."
+
+"I'll let you know if I feel it coming on," the Imp assured him.
+
+Had the sentry been a man of swift and penetrating observation--which he
+wasn't--he might have asked the question in more serious a tone.  For he
+would have remarked that the Imp's black eyes were resting lovingly upon
+a rain-water-pipe, giving to a skilful climber easy access to the terrace
+underneath the Prince's windows.
+
+"I would like to see him," said the Imp.
+
+"Friend o' yours?" asked the sentry.
+
+"Well, not exactly," admitted the Imp.  "But there, you know, everybody's
+talking about him down our street."
+
+"Well, yer'll 'ave to be quick about it," said the sentry.  "'E's off to-
+night."
+
+Tommy's face fell.  "I thought it wasn't till Friday morning."
+
+"Ah!" said the sentry, "that's what the papers say, is it?"  The sentry's
+voice took unconsciously the accent of those from whom no secret is hid.
+"I'll tell yer what yer can do," continued the sentry, enjoying an
+unaccustomed sense of importance.  The sentry glanced left, then right.
+"'E's a slipping off all by 'imself down to Osborne by the 6.40 from
+Waterloo.  Nobody knows it--'cept, o' course, just a few of us.  That's
+'is way all over.  'E just 'ates--"
+
+A footstep sounded down the corridor.  The sentry became statuesque.
+
+At Waterloo, Tommy inspected the 6.40 train.  Only one compartment
+indicated possibilities, an extra large one at the end of the coach next
+the guard's van.  It was labelled "Reserved," and in the place of the
+usual fittings was furnished with a table and four easy-chairs.  Having
+noticed its position, Tommy took a walk up the platform and disappeared
+into the fog.
+
+Twenty minutes later, Prince Blank stepped hurriedly across the platform,
+unnoticed save by half a dozen obsequious officials, and entered the
+compartment reserved for him.  The obsequious officials bowed.  Prince
+Blank, in military fashion, raised his hand.  The 6.40 steamed out
+slowly.
+
+Prince Blank, who was a stout gentleman, though he tried to disguise the
+fact, seldom found himself alone.  When he did, he generally indulged
+himself in a little healthy relaxation.  With two hours' run to
+Southampton before him, free from all possibility of intrusion, Prince
+Blank let loose the buttons of his powerfully built waistcoat, rested his
+bald head on the top of his chair, stretched his great legs across
+another, and closed his terrible, small eyes.
+
+For an instant it seemed to Prince Blank that a draught had entered into
+the carriage.  As, however, the sensation immediately passed away, he did
+not trouble to wake up.  Then the Prince dreamed that somebody was in the
+carriage with him--was sitting opposite to him.  This being an annoying
+sort of dream, the Prince opened his eyes for the purpose of dispelling
+it.  There was somebody sitting opposite to him--a very grimy little
+person, wiping blood off its face and hands with a dingy handkerchief.
+Had the Prince been a man capable of surprise, he would have been
+surprised.
+
+"It's all right," assured him Tommy.  "I ain't here to do any harm.  I
+ain't an Anarchist."
+
+The Prince, by a muscular effort, retired some four or five inches and
+commenced to rebutton his waistcoat.
+
+"How did you get here?" asked the Prince.
+
+"'Twas a bigger job than I'd reckoned on," admitted Tommy, seeking a dry
+inch in the smeared handkerchief, and finding none.  "But that don't
+matter," added Tommy cheerfully, "now I'm here."
+
+"If you do not wish me to hand you over to the police at Southampton, you
+had better answer my questions," remarked the Prince drily.
+
+Tommy was not afraid of princes, but in the lexicon of her harassed youth
+"Police" had always been a word of dread.
+
+"I wanted to get at you."
+
+"I gather that."
+
+"There didn't seem any other way.  It's jolly difficult to get at you.
+You're so jolly artful."
+
+"Tell me how you managed it."
+
+"There's a little bridge for signals just outside Waterloo.  I could see
+that the train would have to pass under it.  So I climbed up and waited.
+It being a foggy night, you see, nobody twigged me.  I say, you are
+Prince Blank, ain't you?"
+
+"I am Prince Blank."
+
+"Should have been mad if I'd landed the wrong man."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"I knew which was your carriage--leastways, I guessed it; and as it came
+along, I did a drop."  Tommy spread out her arms and legs to illustrate
+the action.  "The lamps, you know," explained Tommy, still dabbing at her
+face--"one of them caught me."
+
+"And from the roof?"
+
+"Oh, well, it was easy after that.  There's an iron thing at the back,
+and steps.  You've only got to walk downstairs and round the corner, and
+there you are.  Bit of luck your other door not being locked.  I hadn't
+thought of that.  Haven't got such a thing as a handkerchief about you,
+have you?"
+
+The Prince drew one from his sleeve and passed it to her.  "You mean to
+tell me, boy--"
+
+"Ain't a boy," explained Tommy.  "I'm a girl!"
+
+She said it sadly.  Deeming her new friends such as could be trusted,
+Tommy had accepted their statement that she really was a girl.  But for
+many a long year to come the thought of her lost manhood tinged her voice
+with bitterness.
+
+"A girl!"
+
+Tommy nodded her head.
+
+"Umph!" said the Prince; "I have heard a good deal about the English
+girl.  I was beginning to think it exaggerated.  Stand up."
+
+Tommy obeyed.  It was not altogether her way; but with those eyes beneath
+their shaggy brows bent upon her, it seemed the simplest thing to do.
+
+"So.  And now that you are here, what do you want?"
+
+"To interview you."
+
+Tommy drew forth her list of questions.
+
+The shaggy brows contracted.
+
+"Who put you up to this absurdity?  Who was it?  Tell me at once."
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"Don't lie to me.  His name?"
+
+The terrible, small eyes flashed fire.  But Tommy also had a pair of
+eyes.  Before their blaze of indignation the great man positively
+quailed.  This type of opponent was new to him.
+
+"I'm not lying."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Prince.
+
+And at this point it occurred to the Prince, who being really a great
+man, had naturally a sense of humour, that a conference conducted on
+these lines between the leading statesman of an Empire and an impertinent
+hussy of, say, twelve years old at the outside, might end by becoming
+ridiculous.  So the Prince took up his chair and put it down again beside
+Tommy's, and employing skilfully his undoubted diplomatic gifts, drew
+from her bit by bit the whole story.
+
+"I'm inclined, Miss Jane," said the Great Man, the story ended, "to agree
+with our friend Mr. Hope.  I should say your _metier_ was journalism."
+
+"And you'll let me interview you?" asked Tommy, showing her white teeth.
+
+The Great Man, laying a hand heavier than he guessed on Tommy's shoulder,
+rose.  "I think you are entitled to it."
+
+"What's your views?" demanded Tommy, reading, "of the future political
+and social relationships--"
+
+"Perhaps," suggested the Great Man, "it will be simpler if I write it
+myself."
+
+"Well," concurred Tommy; "my spelling is a bit rocky."
+
+The Great Man drew a chair to the table.
+
+"You won't miss out anything--will you?" insisted Tommy.
+
+"I shall endeavour, Miss Jane, to give you no cause for complaint,"
+gravely he assured her, and sat down to write.
+
+Not till the train began to slacken speed had the Prince finished.  Then,
+blotting and refolding the paper, he stood up.
+
+"I have added some instructions on the back of the last page," explained
+the Prince, "to which you will draw Mr. Hope's particular attention.  I
+would wish you to promise me, Miss Jane, never again to have recourse to
+dangerous acrobatic tricks, not even in the sacred cause of journalism."
+
+"Of course, if you hadn't been so jolly difficult to get at--"
+
+"My fault, I know," agreed the Prince.  "There is not the least doubt as
+to which sex you belong to.  Nevertheless, I want you to promise me.
+Come," urged the Prince, "I have done a good deal for you--more than you
+know."
+
+"All right," consented Tommy a little sulkily.  Tommy hated making
+promises, because she always kept them.  "I promise."
+
+"There is your Interview."  The first Southampton platform lamp shone in
+upon the Prince and Tommy as they stood facing one another.  The Prince,
+who had acquired the reputation, not altogether unjustly, of an
+ill-tempered and savage old gentleman, did a strange thing: taking the
+little, blood-smeared face between his paws, he kissed it.  Tommy always
+remembered the smoky flavour of the bristly grey moustache.
+
+"One thing more," said the Prince sternly--"not a word of all this.  Don't
+open your mouth to speak of it till you are back in Gough Square."
+
+"Do you take me for a mug?" answered Tommy.
+
+They behaved very oddly to Tommy after the Prince had disappeared.
+Everybody took a deal of trouble for her, but none of them seemed to know
+why they were doing it.  They looked at her and went away, and came again
+and looked at her.  And the more they thought about it, the more puzzled
+they became.  Some of them asked her questions, but what Tommy really
+didn't know, added to what she didn't mean to tell, was so prodigious
+that Curiosity itself paled at contemplation of it.
+
+They washed and brushed her up and gave her an excellent supper; and
+putting her into a first-class compartment labelled "Reserved," sent her
+back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived
+about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of
+which to this day are still discernible.
+
+Such and thus was the beginning of all things.  Tommy, having talked for
+half an hour at the rate of two hundred words a minute, had suddenly
+dropped her head upon the table, had been aroused with difficulty and
+persuaded to go to bed.  Peter, in the deep easy-chair before the fire,
+sat long into the night.  Elizabeth, liking quiet company, purred softly.
+Out of the shadows crept to Peter Hope an old forgotten dream--the dream
+of a wonderful new Journal, price one penny weekly, of which the Editor
+should come to be one Thomas Hope, son of Peter Hope, its honoured
+Founder and Originator: a powerful Journal that should supply a long-felt
+want, popular, but at the same time elevating--a pleasure to the public,
+a profit to its owners.  "Do you not remember me?" whispered the Dream.
+"We had long talks together.  The morning and the noonday pass.  The
+evening still is ours.  The twilight also brings its promise."
+
+Elizabeth stopped purring and looked up surprised.  Peter was laughing to
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE SECOND--William Clodd appoints himself Managing Director
+
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle sat on a Windsor-chair in the centre of Rolls Court.
+Mrs. Postwhistle, who, in the days of her Hebehood, had been likened by
+admiring frequenters of the old Mitre in Chancery Lane to the ladies,
+somewhat emaciated, that an English artist, since become famous, was then
+commencing to popularise, had developed with the passing years, yet still
+retained a face of placid youthfulness.  The two facts, taken in
+conjunction, had resulted in an asset to her income not to be despised.
+The wanderer through Rolls Court this summer's afternoon, presuming him
+to be familiar with current journalism, would have retired haunted by the
+sense that the restful-looking lady on the Windsor-chair was someone that
+he ought to know.  Glancing through almost any illustrated paper of the
+period, the problem would have been solved for him.  A photograph of Mrs.
+Postwhistle, taken quite recently, he would have encountered with this
+legend: "_Before_ use of Professor Hardtop's certain cure for
+corpulency."  Beside it a photograph of Mrs. Postwhistle, then Arabella
+Higgins, taken twenty years ago, the legend slightly varied: "_After_
+use," etc.  The face was the same, the figure--there was no denying
+it--had undergone decided alteration.
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle had reached with her chair the centre of Rolls Court in
+course of following the sun.  The little shop, over the lintel of which
+ran: "Timothy Postwhistle, Grocer and Provision Merchant," she had left
+behind her in the shadow.  Old inhabitants of St. Dunstan-in-the-West
+retained recollection of a gentlemanly figure, always in a very gorgeous
+waistcoat, with Dundreary whiskers, to be seen occasionally there behind
+the counter.  All customers it would refer, with the air of a Lord High
+Chamberlain introducing _debutantes_, to Mrs. Postwhistle, evidently
+regarding itself purely as ornamental.  For the last ten years, however,
+no one had noticed it there, and Mrs. Postwhistle had a facility
+amounting almost to genius for ignoring or misunderstanding questions it
+was not to her taste to answer.  Most things were suspected, nothing
+known.  St. Dunstan-in-the-West had turned to other problems.
+
+"If I wasn't wanting to see 'im," remarked to herself Mrs. Postwhistle,
+who was knitting with one eye upon the shop, "'e'd a been 'ere 'fore I'd
+'ad time to clear the dinner things away; certain to 'ave been.  It's a
+strange world."
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle was desirous for the arrival of a gentleman not usually
+awaited with impatience by the ladies of Rolls Court--to wit, one William
+Clodd, rent-collector, whose day for St. Dunstan-in-the-West was Tuesday.
+
+"At last," said Mrs. Postwhistle, though without hope that Mr. Clodd, who
+had just appeared at the other end of the court, could possibly hear her.
+"Was beginning to be afraid as you'd tumbled over yerself in your 'urry
+and 'urt yerself."
+
+Mr. Clodd, perceiving Mrs. Postwhistle, decided to abandon method and
+take No. 7 first.
+
+Mr. Clodd was a short, thick-set, bullet-headed young man, with ways that
+were bustling, and eyes that, though kind, suggested trickiness.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Clodd admiringly, as he pocketed the six half-crowns that
+the lady handed up to him.  "If only they were all like you, Mrs.
+Postwhistle!"
+
+"Wouldn't be no need of chaps like you to worry 'em," pointed out Mrs.
+Postwhistle.
+
+"It's an irony of fate, my being a rent-collector, when you come to think
+of it," remarked Mr. Clodd, writing out the receipt.  "If I had my way,
+I'd put an end to landlordism, root and branch.  Curse of the country."
+
+"Just the very thing I wanted to talk to you about," returned the
+lady--"that lodger o' mine."
+
+"Ah! don't pay, don't he?  You just hand him over to me.  I'll soon have
+it out of him."
+
+"It's not that," explained Mrs. Postwhistle.  "If a Saturday morning
+'appened to come round as 'e didn't pay up without me asking, I should
+know I'd made a mistake--that it must be Friday.  If I don't 'appen to be
+in at 'alf-past ten, 'e puts it in an envelope and leaves it on the
+table."
+
+"Wonder if his mother has got any more like him?" mused Mr. Clodd.  "Could
+do with a few about this neighbourhood.  What is it you want to say about
+him, then?  Merely to brag about him?"
+
+"I wanted to ask you," continued Mrs. Postwhistle, "'ow I could get rid
+of 'im.  It was rather a curious agreement."
+
+"Why do you want to get rid of him?  Too noisy?"
+
+"Noisy!  Why, the cat makes more noise about the 'ouse than 'e does.  'E'd
+make 'is fortune as a burglar."
+
+"Come home late?"
+
+"Never known 'im out after the shutters are up."
+
+"Gives you too much trouble then?"
+
+"I can't say that of 'im.  Never know whether 'e's in the 'ouse or isn't,
+without going upstairs and knocking at the door."
+
+"Here, you tell it your own way," suggested the bewildered Clodd.  "If it
+was anyone else but you, I should say you didn't know your own business."
+
+"'E gets on my nerves," said Mrs. Postwhistle.  "You ain't in a 'urry for
+five minutes?"
+
+Mr. Clodd was always in a hurry.  "But I can forget it talking to you,"
+added the gallant Mr. Clodd.
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle led the way into the little parlour.
+
+"Just the name of it," consented Mr. Clodd.  "Cheerfulness combined with
+temperance; that's the ideal."
+
+"I'll tell you what 'appened only last night," commenced Mrs.
+Postwhistle, seating herself the opposite side of the loo-table.  "A
+letter came for 'im by the seven o'clock post.  I'd seen 'im go out two
+hours before, and though I'd been sitting in the shop the whole blessed
+time, I never saw or 'eard 'im pass through.  E's like that.  It's like
+'aving a ghost for a lodger.  I opened 'is door without knocking and went
+in.  If you'll believe me, 'e was clinging with 'is arms and legs to the
+top of the bedstead--it's one of those old-fashioned, four-post
+things--'is 'ead touching the ceiling.  'E 'adn't got too much clothes
+on, and was cracking nuts with 'is teeth and eating 'em.  'E threw a
+'andful of shells at me, and making the most awful faces at me, started
+off gibbering softly to himself."
+
+"All play, I suppose?  No real vice?" commented the interested Mr. Clodd.
+
+"It will go on for a week, that will," continued Mrs. Postwhistle--"'e
+fancying 'imself a monkey.  Last week he was a tortoise, and was crawling
+about on his stomach with a tea-tray tied on to 'is back.  'E's as
+sensible as most men, if that's saying much, the moment 'e's outside the
+front door; but in the 'ouse--well, I suppose the fact is that 'e's a
+lunatic."
+
+"Don't seem no hiding anything from you," Mrs. Postwhistle remarked Mr.
+Clodd in tones of admiration.  "Does he ever get violent?"
+
+"Don't know what 'e would be like if 'e 'appened to fancy 'imself
+something really dangerous," answered Mrs. Postwhistle.  "I am a bit
+nervous of this new monkey game, I don't mind confessing to you--the
+things that they do according to the picture-books.  Up to now, except
+for imagining 'imself a mole, and taking all his meals underneath the
+carpet, it's been mostly birds and cats and 'armless sort o' things I
+'aven't seemed to mind so much."
+
+"How did you get hold of him?" demanded Mr. Clodd.  "Have much trouble in
+finding him, or did somebody come and tell you about him?"
+
+"Old Gladman, of Chancery Lane, the law stationer, brought 'im 'ere one
+evening about two months ago--said 'e was a sort of distant relative of
+'is, a bit soft in the 'ead, but perfectly 'armless--wanted to put 'im
+with someone who wouldn't impose on 'im.  Well, what between 'aving been
+empty for over five weeks, the poor old gaby 'imself looking as gentle as
+a lamb, and the figure being reasonable, I rather jumped at the idea; and
+old Gladman, explaining as 'ow 'e wanted the thing settled and done with,
+got me to sign a letter."
+
+"Kept a copy of it?" asked the business-like Clodd.
+
+"No.  But I can remember what it was.  Gladman 'ad it all ready.  So long
+as the money was paid punctual and 'e didn't make no disturbance and
+didn't fall sick, I was to go on boarding and lodging 'im for seventeen-
+and-sixpence a week.  It didn't strike me as anything to be objected to
+at the time; but 'e payin' regular, as I've explained to you, and
+be'aving, so far as disturbance is concerned, more like a Christian
+martyr than a man, well, it looks to me as if I'd got to live and die
+with 'im."
+
+"Give him rope, and possibly he'll have a week at being a howling hyaena,
+or a laughing jackass, or something of that sort that will lead to a
+disturbance," thought Mr. Clodd, "in which case, of course, you would
+have your remedy."
+
+"Yes," thought Mrs. Postwhistle, "and possibly also 'e may take it into
+what 'e calls is 'ead to be a tiger or a bull, and then perhaps before
+'e's through with it I'll be beyond the reach of remedies."
+
+"Leave it to me," said Mr. Clodd, rising and searching for his hat.  "I
+know old Gladman; I'll have a talk with him."
+
+"You might get a look at that letter if you can," suggested Mrs.
+Postwhistle, "and tell me what you think about it.  I don't want to spend
+the rest of my days in a lunatic asylum of my own if I can 'elp it."
+
+"You leave it to me," was Mr. Clodd's parting assurance.
+
+The July moon had thrown a silver veil over the grimness of Rolls Court
+when, five hours later, Mr. Clodd's nailed boots echoed again upon its
+uneven pavement; but Mr. Clodd had no eye for moon or stars or such-like;
+always he had things more important to think of.
+
+"Seen the old 'umbug?" asked Mrs. Postwhistle, who was partial to the
+air, leading the way into the parlour.
+
+"First and foremost commenced," Mr. Clodd, as he laid aside his hat, "it
+is quite understood that you really do want to get rid of him?  What's
+that?" demanded Mr. Clodd, a heavy thud upon the floor above having
+caused him to start out of his chair.
+
+"'E came in an hour after you'd gone," explained Mrs. Postwhistle,
+"bringing with him a curtain pole as 'e'd picked up for a shilling in
+Clare Market.  'E's rested one end upon the mantelpiece and tied the
+other to the back of the easy-chair--'is idea is to twine 'imself round
+it and go to sleep upon it.  Yes, you've got it quite right without a
+single blunder.  I do want to get rid of 'im."
+
+"Then," said Mr. Clodd, reseating himself, "it can be done."
+
+"Thank God for that!" was Mrs. Postwhistle's pious ejaculation.
+
+"It is just as I thought," continued Mr. Clodd.  "The old innocent--he's
+Gladman's brother-in-law, by the way--has got a small annuity.  I
+couldn't get the actual figure, but I guess it's about sufficient to pay
+for his keep and leave old Gladman, who is running him, a very decent
+profit.  They don't want to send him to an asylum.  They can't say he's a
+pauper, and to put him into a private establishment would swallow up,
+most likely, the whole of his income.  On the other hand, they don't want
+the bother of looking after him themselves.  I talked pretty straight to
+the old man--let him see I understood the business; and--well, to cut a
+long story short, I'm willing to take on the job, provided you really
+want to have done with it, and Gladman is willing in that case to let you
+off your contract."
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle went to the cupboard to get Mr. Clodd a drink.  Another
+thud upon the floor above--one suggestive of exceptional velocity--arrived
+at the precise moment when Mrs. Postwhistle, the tumbler level with her
+eye, was in the act of measuring.
+
+"I call this making a disturbance," said Mrs. Postwhistle, regarding the
+broken fragments.
+
+"It's only for another night," comforted her Mr. Clodd.  "I'll take him
+away some time to-morrow.  Meanwhile, if I were you, I should spread a
+mattress underneath that perch of his before I went to bed.  I should
+like him handed over to me in reasonable repair."
+
+"It will deaden the sound a bit, any'ow," agreed Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"Success to temperance," drank Mr. Clodd, and rose to go.
+
+"I take it you've fixed things up all right for yourself," said Mrs.
+Postwhistle; "and nobody can blame you if you 'ave.  'Eaven bless you, is
+what I say."
+
+"We shall get on together," prophesied Mr. Clodd.  "I'm fond of animals."
+
+Early the next morning a four-wheeled cab drew up at the entrance to
+Rolls Court, and in it and upon it went away Clodd and Clodd's Lunatic
+(as afterwards he came to be known), together with all the belongings of
+Clodd's Lunatic, the curtain-pole included; and there appeared again
+behind the fanlight of the little grocer's shop the intimation: "Lodgings
+for a Single Man," which caught the eye a few days later of a
+weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose language Mrs. Postwhistle
+found difficulty for a time in comprehending; and that is why one
+sometimes meets to-day worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering
+disconsolately about St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court,
+discomforted because it is no more.  But that is the history of the "Wee
+Laddie," and this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William
+Clodd, Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers,
+magazines, and journals: "Truthful Billy" we called him then.
+
+No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his
+unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him.  A kindly man was William
+Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with business.
+
+"There's no harm in him," asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over
+with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square.  "He's just a bit
+dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to
+do it in.  Kid's play, that's all it is.  The best plan, I find, is to
+treat it as a game and take a hand in it.  Last week he wanted to be a
+lion.  I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat
+and thinking to prowl about the house at night.  Well, I didn't nag
+him--that's no good.  I just got a gun and shot him.  He's a duck now,
+and I'm trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three
+china eggs I've bought him.  Wish some of the sane ones were as little
+trouble."
+
+The summer came again.  Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking little old
+gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with arm-in-arm,
+bustling about the streets and courts that were the scene of Clodd's rent-
+collecting labours.  Their evident attachment to one another was
+curiously displayed; Clodd, the young and red-haired, treating his white-
+haired, withered companion with fatherly indulgence; the other glancing
+up from time to time into Clodd's face with a winning expression of
+infantile affection.
+
+"We are getting much better," explained Clodd, the pair meeting Peter
+Hope one day at the corner of Newcastle Street.  "The more we are out in
+the open air, and the more we have to do and think about, the better for
+us--eh?"
+
+The mild-looking little old gentleman hanging on Clodd's arm smiled and
+nodded.
+
+"Between ourselves," added Mr. Clodd, sinking his voice, "we are not half
+as foolish as folks think we are."
+
+Peter Hope went his way down the Strand.
+
+"Clodd's a good sort--a good sort," said Peter Hope, who, having in his
+time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts
+aloud; "but he's not the man to waste his time.  I wonder."
+
+With the winter Clodd's Lunatic fell ill.
+
+Clodd bustled round to Chancery Lane.
+
+"To tell you the truth," confessed Mr. Gladman, "we never thought he
+would live so long as he has."
+
+"There's the annuity you've got to think of," said Clodd, whom his
+admirers of to-day (and they are many, for he must be a millionaire by
+this time) are fond of alluding to as "that frank, outspoken Englishman."
+"Wouldn't it be worth your while to try what taking him away from the
+fogs might do for him?"
+
+Old Gladman seemed inclined to consider the question, but Mrs. Gladman, a
+brisk, cheerful little woman, had made up her mind.
+
+"We've had what there is to have," said Mrs. Gladman.  "He's
+seventy-three.  What's the sense of risking good money?  Be content."
+
+No one could say--no one ever did say--that Clodd, under the
+circumstances, did not do his best.  Perhaps, after all, nothing could
+have helped.  The little old gentleman, at Clodd's suggestion, played at
+being a dormouse and lay very still.  If he grew restless, thereby
+bringing on his cough, Clodd, as a terrible black cat, was watching to
+pounce upon him.  Only by keeping very quiet and artfully pretending to
+be asleep could he hope to escape the ruthless Clodd.
+
+Doctor William Smith (ne Wilhelm Schmidt) shrugged his fat shoulders.  "We
+can do noding.  Dese fogs of ours: id is de one ting dat enables the
+foreigner to crow over us.  Keep him quiet.  De dormouse--id is a goot
+idea."
+
+That evening William Clodd mounted to the second floor of 16, Gough
+Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at the
+door.
+
+"Come in," said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope's.
+
+Mr. William Clodd's ambition was, and always had been, to be the owner or
+part-owner of a paper.  To-day, as I have said, he owns a quarter of a
+hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for seven more.  But
+twenty years ago "Clodd and Co., Limited," was but in embryo.  And Peter
+Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a long year cherished the
+ambition to be, before he died, the owner or part-owner of a paper.  Peter
+Hope to-day owns nothing, except perhaps the knowledge, if such things be
+permitted, that whenever and wherever his name is mentioned, kind
+thoughts arise unbidden--that someone of the party will surely say: "Dear
+old Peter!  What a good fellow he was!"  Which also may be in its way a
+valuable possession: who knows?  But twenty years ago Peter's horizon was
+limited by Fleet Street.
+
+Peter Hope was forty-seven, so he said, a dreamer and a scholar.  William
+Clodd was three-and-twenty, a born hustler, very wide awake.  Meeting one
+day by accident upon an omnibus, when Clodd lent Peter, who had come out
+without his purse, threepence to pay his fare with; drifting into
+acquaintanceship, each had come to acquire a liking and respect for the
+other.  The dreamer thought with wonder of Clodd's shrewd practicability;
+the cute young man of business was lost in admiration of what seemed to
+him his old friend's marvellous learning.  Both had arrived at the
+conclusion that a weekly journal with Peter Hope as editor, and William
+Clodd as manager, would be bound to be successful.
+
+"If only we could scrape together a thousand pounds!" had sighed Peter.
+
+"The moment we lay our hands upon the coin, we'll start that paper.
+Remember, it's a bargain," had answered William Clodd.
+
+Mr. William Clodd turned the handle and walked in.  With the door still
+in his hand he paused to look round the room.  It was the first time he
+had seen it.  His meetings hitherto with Peter Hope had been chance
+_rencontres_ in street or restaurant.  Always had he been curious to view
+the sanctuary of so much erudition.
+
+A large, oak-panelled room, its three high windows, each with a low,
+cushioned seat beneath it, giving on to Gough Square.  Thirty-five years
+before, Peter Hope, then a young dandy with side whiskers close-cropped
+and terminating just below the ear; with wavy, brown hair, giving to his
+fresh-complexioned face an appearance almost girlish; in cut-away blue
+coat, flowered waistcoat, black silk cravat secured by two gold pins
+chained together, and tightly strapped grey trouserings, had, aided and
+abetted by a fragile little lady in crinoline and much-flounced skirt,
+and bodice somewhat low, with corkscrew curls each movement of her head
+set ringing, planned and furnished it in accordance with the sober canons
+then in vogue, spending thereupon more than they should, as is to be
+expected from the young to whom the future promises all things.  The fine
+Brussels carpet!  A little too bright, had thought the shaking curls.
+"The colours will tone down, miss--ma'am."  The shopman knew.  Only by
+the help of the round island underneath the massive Empire table, by
+excursions into untrodden corners, could Peter recollect the rainbow
+floor his feet had pressed when he was twenty-one.  The noble bookcase,
+surmounted by Minerva's bust.  Really it was too expensive.  But the
+nodding curls had been so obstinate.  Peter's silly books and papers must
+be put away in order; the curls did not intend to permit any excuse for
+untidiness.  So, too, the handsome, brass-bound desk; it must be worthy
+of the beautiful thoughts Peter would pen upon it.  The great sideboard,
+supported by two such angry-looking mahogany lions; it must be strong to
+support the weight of silver clever Peter would one day purchase to place
+upon it.  The few oil paintings in their heavy frames.  A solidly
+furnished, sober apartment; about it that subtle atmosphere of dignity
+one finds but in old rooms long undisturbed, where one seems to read upon
+the walls: "I, Joy and Sorrow, twain in one, have dwelt here."  One item
+only there was that seemed out of place among its grave surroundings--a
+guitar, hanging from the wall, ornamented with a ridiculous blue bow,
+somewhat faded.
+
+"Mr. William Clodd?" demanded the decided voice.
+
+Clodd started and closed the door.
+
+"Guessed it in once," admitted Mr. Clodd.
+
+"I thought so," said the decided voice.  "We got your note this
+afternoon.  Mr. Hope will be back at eight.  Will you kindly hang up your
+hat and coat in the hall?  You will find a box of cigars on the
+mantelpiece.  Excuse my being busy.  I must finish this, then I'll talk
+to you."
+
+The owner of the decided voice went on writing.  Clodd, having done as he
+was bid, sat himself in the easy-chair before the fire and smoked.  Of
+the person behind the desk Mr. Clodd could see but the head and
+shoulders.  It had black, curly hair, cut short.  It's only garment
+visible below the white collar and red tie might have been a boy's jacket
+designed more like a girl's, or a girl's designed more like a boy's;
+partaking of the genius of English statesmanship, it appeared to be a
+compromise.  Mr. Clodd remarked the long, drooping lashes over the
+bright, black eyes.
+
+"It's a girl," said Mr. Clodd to himself; "rather a pretty girl."
+
+Mr. Clodd, continuing downward, arrived at the nose.
+
+"No," said Mr. Clodd to himself, "it's a boy--a cheeky young beggar, I
+should say."
+
+The person at the desk, giving a grunt of satisfaction, gathered together
+sheets of manuscript and arranged them; then, resting its elbows on the
+desk and taking its head between its hands, regarded Mr. Clodd.
+
+"Don't you hurry yourself," said Mr. Clodd; "but when you really have
+finished, tell me what you think of me."
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the person at the desk.  "I have got into
+a habit of staring at people.  I know it's rude.  I'm trying to break
+myself of it."
+
+"Tell me your name," suggested Mr. Clodd, "and I'll forgive you."
+
+"Tommy," was the answer--"I mean Jane."
+
+"Make up your mind," advised Mr. Clodd; "don't let me influence you.  I
+only want the truth."
+
+"You see," explained the person at the desk, "everybody calls me Tommy,
+because that used to be my name.  But now it's Jane."
+
+"I see," said Mr. Clodd.  "And which am I to call you?"
+
+The person at the desk pondered.  "Well, if this scheme you and Mr. Hope
+have been talking about really comes to anything, we shall be a good deal
+thrown together, you see, and then I expect you'll call me Tommy--most
+people do."
+
+"You've heard about the scheme?  Mr. Hope has told you?"
+
+"Why, of course," replied Tommy.  "I'm Mr. Hope's devil."
+
+For the moment Clodd doubted whether his old friend had not started a
+rival establishment to his own.
+
+"I help him in his work," Tommy relieved his mind by explaining.  "In
+journalistic circles we call it devilling."
+
+"I understand," said Mr. Clodd.  "And what do you think, Tommy, of the
+scheme?  I may as well start calling you Tommy, because, between you and
+me, I think the idea will come to something."
+
+Tommy fixed her black eyes upon him.  She seemed to be looking him right
+through.
+
+"You are staring again, Tommy," Clodd reminded her.  "You'll have trouble
+breaking yourself of that habit, I can see."
+
+"I was trying to make up my mind about you.  Everything depends upon the
+business man."
+
+"Glad to hear you say so," replied the self-satisfied Clodd.
+
+"If you are very clever--Do you mind coming nearer to the lamp?  I can't
+quite see you over there."
+
+Clodd never could understand why he did it--never could understand why,
+from first to last, he always did what Tommy wished him to do; his only
+consolation being that other folks seemed just as helpless.  He rose and,
+crossing the long room, stood at attention before the large desk,
+nervousness, to which he was somewhat of a stranger, taking possession of
+him.
+
+"You don't _look_ very clever."
+
+Clodd experienced another new sensation--that of falling in his own
+estimation.
+
+"And yet one can see that you _are_ clever."
+
+The mercury of Clodd's conceit shot upward to a point that in the case of
+anyone less physically robust might have been dangerous to health.
+
+Clodd held out his hand.  "We'll pull it through, Tommy.  The Guv'nor
+shall find the literature; you and I will make it go.  I like you."
+
+And Peter Hope, entering at the moment, caught a spark from the light
+that shone in the eyes of William Clodd and Tommy, whose other name was
+Jane, as, gripping hands, they stood with the desk between them, laughing
+they knew not why.  And the years fell from old Peter, and, again a boy,
+he also laughed he knew not why.  He had sipped from the wine-cup of
+youth.
+
+"It's all settled, Guv'nor!" cried Clodd.  "Tommy and I have fixed things
+up.  We'll start with the New Year."
+
+"You've got the money?"
+
+"I'm reckoning on it.  I don't see very well how I can miss it."
+
+"Sufficient?"
+
+"Just about.  You get to work."
+
+"I've saved a little," began Peter.  "It ought to have been more, but
+somehow it isn't."
+
+"Perhaps we shall want it," Clodd replied; "perhaps we shan't.  You are
+supplying the brains."
+
+The three for a few moments remained silent.
+
+"I think, Tommy," said Peter, "I think a bottle of the old Madeira--"
+
+"Not to-night," said Clodd; "next time."
+
+"To drink success," urged Peter.
+
+"One man's success generally means some other poor devil's misfortune,"
+answered Clodd.
+
+"Can't be helped, of course, but don't want to think about it to-night.
+Must be getting back to my dormouse.  Good night."
+
+Clodd shook hands and bustled out.
+
+"I thought as much," mused Peter aloud.
+
+"What an odd mixture the man is!  Kind--no one could have been kinder to
+the poor old fellow.  Yet all the while--We are an odd mixture, Tommy,"
+said Peter Hope, "an odd mixture, we men and women."  Peter was a
+philosopher.
+
+The white-whiskered old dormouse soon coughed himself to sleep for ever.
+
+"I shall want you and the missis to come to the funeral, Gladman," said
+Mr. Clodd, as he swung into the stationer's shop; "and bring Pincer with
+you.  I'm writing to him."
+
+"Don't see what good we can do," demurred Gladman.
+
+"Well, you three are his only relatives; it's only decent you should be
+present," urged Clodd.  "Besides, there's the will to be read.  You may
+care to hear it."
+
+The dry old law stationer opened wide his watery eyes.
+
+"His will!  Why, what had he got to leave?  There was nothing but the
+annuity."
+
+"You turn up at the funeral," Clodd told him, "and you'll learn all about
+it.  Bonner's clerk will be there and will bring it with him.  Everything
+is going to be done _comme il faut_, as the French say."
+
+"I ought to have known of this," began Mr. Gladman.
+
+"Glad to find you taking so much interest in the old chap," said Clodd.
+"Pity he's dead and can't thank you."
+
+"I warn you," shouted old Gladman, whose voice was rising to a scream,
+"he was a helpless imbecile, incapable of acting for himself!  If any
+undue influence--"
+
+"See you on Friday," broke in Clodd, who was busy.
+
+Friday's ceremony was not a sociable affair.  Mrs. Gladman spoke
+occasionally in a shrill whisper to Mr. Gladman, who replied with grunts.
+Both employed the remainder of their time in scowling at Clodd.  Mr.
+Pincer, a stout, heavy gentleman connected with the House of Commons,
+maintained a ministerial reserve.  The undertaker's foreman expressed
+himself as thankful when it was over.  He criticised it as the humpiest
+funeral he had ever known; for a time he had serious thoughts of changing
+his profession.
+
+The solicitor's clerk was waiting for the party on its return from Kensal
+Green.  Clodd again offered hospitality.  Mr. Pincer this time allowed
+himself a glass of weak whisky-and-water, and sipped it with an air of
+doing so without prejudice.  The clerk had one a little stronger, Mrs.
+Gladman, dispensing with consultation, declined shrilly for self and
+partner.  Clodd, explaining that he always followed legal precedent,
+mixed himself one also and drank "To our next happy meeting."  Then the
+clerk read.
+
+It was a short and simple will, dated the previous August.  It appeared
+that the old gentleman, unknown to his relatives, had died possessed of
+shares in a silver mine, once despaired of, now prospering.  Taking them
+at present value, they would produce a sum well over two thousand pounds.
+The old gentleman had bequeathed five hundred pounds to his brother-in-
+law, Mr. Gladman; five hundred pounds to his only other living relative,
+his first cousin, Mr. Pincer; the residue to his friend, William Clodd,
+as a return for the many kindnesses that gentleman had shown him.
+
+Mr. Gladman rose, more amused than angry.
+
+"And you think you are going to pocket that one thousand to twelve
+hundred pounds.  You really do?" he asked Mr. Clodd, who, with legs
+stretched out before him, sat with his hands deep in his trousers
+pockets.
+
+"That's the idea," admitted Mr. Clodd.
+
+Mr. Gladman laughed, but without much lightening the atmosphere.  "Upon
+my word, Clodd, you amuse me--you quite amuse me," repeated Mr. Gladman.
+
+"You always had a sense of humour," commented Mr. Clodd.
+
+"You villain!  You double-dyed villain!" screamed Mr. Gladman, suddenly
+changing his tone.  "You think the law is going to allow you to swindle
+honest men!  You think we are going to sit still for you to rob us!  That
+will--"  Mr. Gladman pointed a lank forefinger dramatically towards the
+table.
+
+"You mean to dispute it?" inquired Mr. Clodd.
+
+For a moment Mr. Gladman stood aghast at the other's coolness, but soon
+found his voice again.
+
+"Dispute it!" he shrieked.  "Do you dispute that you influenced
+him?--dictated it to him word for word, made the poor old helpless idiot
+sign it, he utterly incapable of even understanding--"
+
+"Don't chatter so much," interrupted Mr. Clodd.  "It's not a pretty
+voice, yours.  What I asked you was, do you intend to dispute it?"
+
+"If you will kindly excuse us," struck in Mrs. Gladman, addressing Mr.
+Clodd with an air of much politeness, "we shall just have time, if we go
+now, to catch our solicitor before he leaves his office."
+
+Mr. Gladman took up his hat from underneath his chair.
+
+"One moment," suggested Mr. Clodd.  "I did influence him to make that
+will.  If you don't like it, there's an end of it."
+
+"Of course," commenced Mr. Gladman in a mollified tone.
+
+"Sit down," suggested Mr. Clodd.  "Let's try another one."  Mr. Clodd
+turned to the clerk.  "The previous one, Mr. Wright, if you please; the
+one dated June the 10th."
+
+An equally short and simple document, it bequeathed three hundred pounds
+to Mr. William Clodd in acknowledgment of kindnesses received, the
+residue to the Royal Zoological Society of London, the deceased having
+been always interested in and fond of animals.  The relatives, "Who have
+never shown me the slightest affection or given themselves the slightest
+trouble concerning me, and who have already received considerable sums
+out of my income," being by name excluded.
+
+"I may mention," observed Mr. Clodd, no one else appearing inclined to
+break the silence, "that in suggesting the Royal Zoological Society to my
+poor old friend as a fitting object for his benevolence, I had in mind a
+very similar case that occurred five years ago.  A bequest to them was
+disputed on the grounds that the testator was of unsound mind.  They had
+to take their case to the House of Lords before they finally won it."
+
+"Anyhow," remarked Mr. Gladman, licking his lips, which were dry, "you
+won't get anything, Mr. Clodd--no, not even your three-hundred pounds,
+clever as you think yourself.  My brother-in-law's money will go to the
+lawyers."
+
+Then Mr. Pincer rose and spoke slowly and clearly.  "If there must be a
+lunatic connected with our family, which I don't see why there should be,
+it seems to me to be you, Nathaniel Gladman."
+
+Mr. Gladman stared back with open mouth.  Mr. Pincer went on
+impressively.
+
+"As for my poor old cousin Joe, he had his eccentricities, but that was
+all.  I for one am prepared to swear that he was of sound mind in August
+last and quite capable of making his own will.  It seems to me that the
+other thing, dated in June, is just waste paper."
+
+Mr. Pincer having delivered himself, sat down again.  Mr. Gladman showed
+signs of returning language.
+
+"Oh! what's the use of quarrelling?" chirped in cheery Mrs. Gladman.
+"It's five hundred pounds we never expected.  Live and let live is what I
+always say."
+
+"It's the damned artfulness of the thing," said Mr. Gladman, still very
+white about the gills.
+
+"Oh, you have a little something to thaw your face," suggested his wife.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Gladman, on the strength of the five hundred pounds, went
+home in a cab.  Mr. Pincer stayed behind and made a night of it with Mr.
+Clodd and Bonner's clerk, at Clodd's expense.
+
+The residue worked out at eleven hundred and sixty-nine pounds and a few
+shillings.  The capital of the new company, "established for the purpose
+of carrying on the business of newspaper publishers and distributors,
+printers, advertising agents, and any other trade and enterprise
+affiliated to the same," was one thousand pounds in one pound shares,
+fully paid up; of which William Clodd, Esquire, was registered proprietor
+of four hundred and sixty-three; Peter Hope, M.A., of 16, Gough Square,
+of also four hundred and sixty-three; Miss Jane Hope, adopted daughter of
+said Peter Hope (her real name nobody, herself included, ever having
+known), and generally called Tommy, of three, paid for by herself after a
+battle royal with William Clodd; Mrs. Postwhistle, of Rolls Court, of
+ten, presented by the promoter; Mr. Pincer, of the House of Commons, also
+of ten (still owing for); Dr. Smith (ne Schmidt) of fifty; James Douglas
+Alexander Calder McTear (otherwise the "Wee Laddie"), residing then in
+Mrs. Postwhistle's first floor front, of one, paid for by poem published
+in the first number: "The Song of the Pen."
+
+Choosing a title for the paper cost much thought.  Driven to despair,
+they called it _Good Humour_.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE THIRD--Grindley Junior drops into the Position of Publisher
+
+
+Few are the ways of the West Central district that have changed less
+within the last half-century than Nevill's Court, leading from Great New
+Street into Fetter Lane.  Its north side still consists of the same
+quaint row of small low shops that stood there--doing perhaps a little
+brisker business--when George the Fourth was King; its southern side of
+the same three substantial houses each behind a strip of garden, pleasant
+by contrast with surrounding grimness, built long ago--some say before
+Queen Anne was dead.
+
+Out of the largest of these, passing through the garden, then well cared
+for, came one sunny Sunday morning, some fifteen years before the
+commencement proper of this story, one Solomon Appleyard, pushing in
+front of him a perambulator.  At the brick wall surmounted by wooden
+railings that divides the garden from the court, Solomon paused, hearing
+behind him the voice of Mrs. Appleyard speaking from the doorstep.
+
+"If I don't see you again until dinner-time, I'll try and get on without
+you, understand.  Don't think of nothing but your pipe and forget the
+child.  And be careful of the crossings."
+
+Mrs. Appleyard retired into the darkness.  Solomon, steering the
+perambulator carefully, emerged from Nevill's Court without accident.  The
+quiet streets drew Solomon westward.  A vacant seat beneath the shade
+overlooking the Long Water in Kensington Gardens invited to rest.
+
+"Piper?" suggested a small boy to Solomon.  "_Sunday Times_, _'Server_?"
+
+"My boy," said Mr. Appleyard, speaking slowly, "when you've been mewed up
+with newspapers eighteen hours a day for six days a week, you can do
+without 'em for a morning.  Take 'em away.  I want to forget the smell of
+'em."
+
+Solomon, having assured himself that the party in the perambulator was
+still breathing, crossed his legs and lit his pipe.
+
+"Hezekiah!"
+
+The exclamation had been wrung from Solomon Appleyard by the approach of
+a stout, short man clad in a remarkably ill-fitting broad-cloth suit.
+
+"What, Sol, my boy?"
+
+"It looked like you," said Solomon.  "And then I said to myself: 'No;
+surely it can't be Hezekiah; he'll be at chapel.'"
+
+"You run about," said Hezekiah, addressing a youth of some four summers
+he had been leading by the hand.  "Don't you go out of my sight; and
+whatever you do, don't you do injury to those new clothes of yours, or
+you'll wish you'd never been put into them.  The truth is," continued
+Hezekiah to his friend, his sole surviving son and heir being out of
+earshot, "the morning tempted me.  'Tain't often I get a bit of fresh
+air."
+
+"Doing well?"
+
+"The business," replied Hezekiah, "is going up by leaps and bounds--leaps
+and bounds.  But, of course, all that means harder work for me.  It's
+from six in the morning till twelve o'clock at night."
+
+"There's nothing I know of," returned Solomon, who was something of a
+pessimist, "that's given away free gratis for nothing except misfortune."
+
+"Keeping yourself up to the mark ain't too easy," continued Hezekiah;
+"and when it comes to other folks! play's all they think of.  Talk
+religion to them--why, they laugh at you!  What the world's coming to, I
+don't know.  How's the printing business doing?"
+
+"The printing business," responded the other, removing his pipe and
+speaking somewhat sadly, "the printing business looks like being a big
+thing.  Capital, of course, is what hampers me--or, rather, the want of
+it.  But Janet, she's careful; she don't waste much, Janet don't."
+
+"Now, with Anne," replied Hezekiah, "it's all the other way--pleasure,
+gaiety, a day at Rosherville or the Crystal Palace--anything to waste
+money."
+
+"Ah! she was always fond of her bit of fun," remembered Solomon.
+
+"Fun!" retorted Hezekiah.  "I like a bit of fun myself.  But not if
+you've got to pay for it.  Where's the fun in that?"
+
+"What I ask myself sometimes," said Solomon, looking straight in front of
+him, "is what do we do it for?"
+
+"What do we do what for?"
+
+"Work like blessed slaves, depriving ourselves of all enjoyments.  What's
+the sense of it?  What--"
+
+A voice from the perambulator beside him broke the thread of Solomon
+Appleyard's discourse.  The sole surviving son of Hezekiah Grindley,
+seeking distraction and finding none, had crept back unperceived.  A
+perambulator!  A thing his experience told him out of which excitement in
+some form or another could generally be obtained.  You worried it and
+took your chance.  Either it howled, in which case you had to run for
+your life, followed--and, unfortunately, overtaken nine times out of
+ten--by a whirlwind of vengeance; or it gurgled: in which case the
+heavens smiled and halos descended on your head.  In either event you
+escaped the deadly ennui that is the result of continuous virtue.  Master
+Grindley, his star having pointed out to him a peacock's feather lying on
+the ground, had, with one eye upon his unobservant parent, removed the
+complicated coverings sheltering Miss Helvetia Appleyard from the world,
+and anticipating by a quarter of a century the prime enjoyment of British
+youth, had set to work to tickle that lady on the nose.  Miss Helvetia
+Appleyard awakened, did precisely what the tickled British maiden of to-
+day may be relied upon to do under corresponding circumstances: she first
+of all took swift and comprehensive survey of the male thing behind the
+feather.  Had he been displeasing in her eyes, she would, one may rely
+upon it, have anteceded the behaviour in similar case of her descendant
+of to-day--that is to say, have expressed resentment in no uncertain
+terms.  Master Nathaniel Grindley proving, however, to her taste, that
+which might have been considered impertinence became accepted as a fit
+and proper form of introduction.  Miss Appleyard smiled graciously--nay,
+further, intimated desire for more.
+
+"That your only one?" asked the paternal Grindley.
+
+"She's the only one," replied Solomon, speaking in tones less
+pessimistic.
+
+Miss Appleyard had with the help of Grindley junior wriggled herself into
+a sitting posture.  Grindley junior continued his attentions, the lady
+indicating by signs the various points at which she was most susceptible.
+
+"Pretty picture they make together, eh?" suggested Hezekiah in a whisper
+to his friend.
+
+"Never saw her take to anyone like that before," returned Solomon,
+likewise in a whisper.
+
+A neighbouring church clock chimed twelve.  Solomon Appleyard, knocking
+the ashes from his pipe, arose.
+
+"Don't know any reason myself why we shouldn't see a little more of one
+another than we do," suggested Grindley senior, shaking hands.
+
+"Give us a look-up one Sunday afternoon," suggested Solomon.  "Bring the
+youngster with you."
+
+Solomon Appleyard and Hezekiah Grindley had started life within a few
+months of one another some five-and-thirty years before.  Likewise within
+a few hundred yards of one another, Solomon at his father's bookselling
+and printing establishment on the east side of the High Street of a small
+Yorkshire town; Hezekiah at his father's grocery shop upon the west side,
+opposite.  Both had married farmers' daughters.  Solomon's natural bent
+towards gaiety Fate had corrected by directing his affections to a
+partner instinct with Yorkshire shrewdness; and with shrewdness go other
+qualities that make for success rather than for happiness.  Hezekiah, had
+circumstances been equal, might have been his friend's rival for Janet's
+capable and saving hand, had not sweet-tempered, laughing Annie
+Glossop--directed by Providence to her moral welfare, one must
+presume--fallen in love with him.  Between Jane's virtues and Annie's
+three hundred golden sovereigns Hezekiah had not hesitated a moment.
+Golden sovereigns were solid facts; wifely virtues, by a serious-minded
+and strong-willed husband, could be instilled--at all events,
+light-heartedness suppressed.  The two men, Hezekiah urged by his own
+ambition, Solomon by his wife's, had arrived in London within a year of
+one another: Hezekiah to open a grocer's shop in Kensington, which those
+who should have known assured him was a hopeless neighbourhood.  But
+Hezekiah had the instinct of the money-maker.  Solomon, after looking
+about him, had fixed upon the roomy, substantial house in Nevill's Court
+as a promising foundation for a printer's business.
+
+That was ten years ago.  The two friends, scorning delights, living
+laborious days, had seen but little of one another.  Light-hearted Annie
+had borne to her dour partner two children who had died.  Nathaniel
+George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on,
+and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought
+sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, Kensington.
+Mrs. Grindley, grown weak and fretful, had rested from her labours.
+
+Mrs. Appleyard's guardian angel, prudent like his protege, had waited
+till Solomon's business was well established before despatching the stork
+to Nevill's Court, with a little girl.  Later had sent a boy, who, not
+finding the close air of St. Dunstan to his liking, had found his way
+back again; thus passing out of this story and all others.  And there
+remained to carry on the legend of the Grindleys and the Appleyards only
+Nathaniel George, now aged five, and Janet Helvetia, quite a beginner,
+who took lift seriously.
+
+There are no such things as facts.  Narrow-minded folk--surveyors,
+auctioneers, and such like--would have insisted that the garden between
+the old Georgian house and Nevill's Court was a strip of land one hundred
+and eighteen feet by ninety-two, containing a laburnum tree, six laurel
+bushes, and a dwarf deodora.  To Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia it
+was the land of Thule, "the furthest boundaries of which no man has
+reached."  On rainy Sunday afternoons they played in the great, gloomy
+pressroom, where silent ogres, standing motionless, stretched out iron
+arms to seize them as they ran.  Then just when Nathaniel George was
+eight, and Janet Helvetia four and a half, Hezekiah launched the
+celebrated "Grindley's Sauce."  It added a relish to chops and steaks,
+transformed cold mutton into a luxury, and swelled the head of Hezekiah
+Grindley--which was big enough in all conscience as it was--and
+shrivelled up his little hard heart.  The Grindleys and the Appleyards
+visited no more.  As a sensible fellow ought to have seen for himself, so
+thought Hezekiah, the Sauce had altered all things.  The possibility of a
+marriage between their children, things having remained equal, might have
+been a pretty fancy; but the son of the great Grindley, whose name in
+three-foot letters faced the world from every hoarding, would have to
+look higher than a printer's daughter.  Solomon, a sudden and vehement
+convert to the principles of mediaeval feudalism, would rather see his
+only child, granddaughter of the author of _The History of Kettlewell_
+and other works, dead and buried than married to a grocer's son, even
+though he might inherit a fortune made out of poisoning the public with a
+mixture of mustard and sour beer.  It was many years before Nathaniel
+George and Janet Helvetia met one another again, and when they did they
+had forgotten one another.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Hezekiah S. Grindley, a short, stout, and pompous gentleman, sat under a
+palm in the gorgeously furnished drawing-room of his big house at Notting
+Hill.  Mrs. Grindley, a thin, faded woman, the despair of her dressmaker,
+sat as near to the fire as its massive and imposing copper outworks would
+permit, and shivered.  Grindley junior, a fair-haired, well-shaped youth,
+with eyes that the other sex found attractive, leant with his hands in
+his pockets against a scrupulously robed statue of Diana, and appeared
+uncomfortable.
+
+"I'm making the money--making it hand over fist.  All you'll have to do
+will be to spend it," Grindley senior was explaining to his son and heir.
+
+"I'll do that all right, dad."
+
+"I'm not so sure of it," was his father's opinion.  "You've got to prove
+yourself worthy to spend it.  Don't you think I shall be content to have
+slaved all these years merely to provide a brainless young idiot with the
+means of self-indulgence.  I leave my money to somebody worthy of me.
+Understand, sir?--somebody worthy of me."
+
+Mrs. Grindley commenced a sentence; Mr. Grindley turned his small eyes
+upon her.  The sentence remained unfinished.
+
+"You were about to say something," her husband reminded her.
+
+Mrs. Grindley said it was nothing.
+
+"If it is anything worth hearing--if it is anything that will assist the
+discussion, let's have it."  Mr. Grindley waited.  "If not, if you
+yourself do not consider it worth finishing, why have begun it?"
+
+Mr. Grindley returned to his son and heir.  "You haven't done too well at
+school--in fact, your school career has disappointed me."
+
+"I know I'm not clever," Grindley junior offered as an excuse.
+
+"Why not?  Why aren't you clever?"
+
+His son and heir was unable to explain.
+
+"You are my son--why aren't you clever?  It's laziness, sir; sheer
+laziness!"
+
+"I'll try and do better at Oxford, sir--honour bright I will!"
+
+"You had better," advised him his father; "because I warn you, your whole
+future depends upon it.  You know me.  You've got to be a credit to me,
+to be worthy of the name of Grindley--or the name, my boy, is all you'll
+have."
+
+Old Grindley meant it, and his son knew that he meant it.  The old
+Puritan principles and instincts were strong in the old gentleman--formed,
+perhaps, the better part of him.  Idleness was an abomination to him;
+devotion to pleasure, other than the pleasure of money-making, a grievous
+sin in his eyes.  Grindley junior fully intended to do well at Oxford,
+and might have succeeded.  In accusing himself of lack of cleverness, he
+did himself an injustice.  He had brains, he had energy, he had
+character.  Our virtues can be our stumbling-blocks as well as our vices.
+Young Grindley had one admirable virtue that needs, above all others,
+careful controlling: he was amiability itself.  Before the charm and
+sweetness of it, Oxford snobbishness went down.  The Sauce, against the
+earnest counsel of its own advertisement, was forgotten; the pickles
+passed by.  To escape the natural result of his popularity would have
+needed a stronger will than young Grindley possessed.  For a time the
+true state of affairs was hidden from the eye of Grindley senior.  To
+"slack" it this term, with the full determination of "swotting" it the
+next, is always easy; the difficulty beginning only with the new term.
+Possibly with luck young Grindley might have retrieved his position and
+covered up the traces of his folly, but for an unfortunate accident.
+Returning to college with some other choice spirits at two o'clock in the
+morning, it occurred to young Grindley that trouble might be saved all
+round by cutting out a pane of glass with a diamond ring and entering his
+rooms, which were on the ground-floor, by the window.  That, in mistake
+for his own, he should have selected the bedroom of the College Rector
+was a misfortune that might have occurred to anyone who had commenced the
+evening on champagne and finished it on whisky.  Young Grindley, having
+been warned already twice before, was "sent down."  And then, of course,
+the whole history of the three wasted years came out.  Old Grindley in
+his study chair having talked for half an hour at the top of his voice,
+chose, partly by reason of physical necessity, partly by reason of
+dormant dramatic instinct, to speak quietly and slowly.
+
+"I'll give you one chance more, my boy, and one only.  I've tried you as
+a gentleman--perhaps that was my mistake.  Now I'll try you as a grocer."
+
+"As a what?"
+
+"As a grocer, sir--g-r-o-c-e-r--grocer, a man who stands behind a counter
+in a white apron and his shirt-sleeves; who sells tea and sugar and
+candied peel and such-like things to customers--old ladies, little girls;
+who rises at six in the morning, takes down the shutters, sweeps out the
+shop, cleans the windows; who has half an hour for his dinner of corned
+beef and bread; who puts up the shutters at ten o'clock at night, tidies
+up the shop, has his supper, and goes to bed, feeling his day has not
+been wasted.  I meant to spare you.  I was wrong.  You shall go through
+the mill as I went through it.  If at the end of two years you've done
+well with your time, learned something--learned to be a man, at all
+events--you can come to me and thank me."
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," suggested Grindley junior, whose handsome face during
+the last few minutes had grown very white, "I might not make a very
+satisfactory grocer.  You see, sir, I've had no experience."
+
+"I am glad you have some sense," returned his father drily.  "You are
+quite right.  Even a grocer's business requires learning.  It will cost
+me a little money; but it will be the last I shall ever spend upon you.
+For the first year you will have to be apprenticed, and I shall allow you
+something to live on.  It shall be more than I had at your age--we'll say
+a pound a week.  After that I shall expect you to keep yourself."
+
+Grindley senior rose.  "You need not give me your answer till the
+evening.  You are of age.  I have no control over you unless you are
+willing to agree.  You can go my way, or you can go your own."
+
+Young Grindley, who had inherited a good deal of his father's grit, felt
+very much inclined to go his own; but, hampered on the other hand by the
+sweetness of disposition he had inherited from his mother, was unable to
+withstand the argument of that lady's tears, so that evening accepted old
+Grindley's terms, asking only as a favour that the scene of his probation
+might be in some out-of-the-way neighbourhood where there would be little
+chance of his being met by old friends.
+
+"I have thought of all that," answered his father.  "My object isn't to
+humiliate you more than is necessary for your good.  The shop I have
+already selected, on the assumption that you would submit, is as quiet
+and out-of-the-way as you could wish.  It is in a turning off Fetter
+Lane, where you'll see few other people than printers and caretakers.
+You'll lodge with a woman, a Mrs. Postwhistle, who seems a very sensible
+person.  She'll board you and lodge you, and every Saturday you'll
+receive a post-office order for six shillings, out of which you'll find
+yourself in clothes.  You can take with you sufficient to last you for
+the first six months, but no more.  At the end of the year you can change
+if you like and go to another shop, or make your own arrangements with
+Mrs. Postwhistle.  If all is settled, you go there to-morrow.  You go out
+of this house to-morrow in any event."
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle was a large, placid lady of philosophic temperament.
+Hitherto the little grocer's shop in Rolls Court, Fetter Lane, had been
+easy of management by her own unaided efforts; but the neighbourhood was
+rapidly changing.  Other grocers' shops were disappearing one by one,
+making way for huge blocks of buildings, where hundreds of iron presses,
+singing day and night, spread to the earth the song of the Mighty Pen.
+There were hours when the little shop could hardly accommodate its crowd
+of customers.  Mrs. Postwhistle, of a bulk not to be moved quickly, had,
+after mature consideration, conquering a natural disinclination to
+change, decided to seek assistance.
+
+Young Grindley, alighting from a four-wheeled cab in Fetter Lane, marched
+up the court, followed by a weak-kneed wastrel staggering under the
+weight of a small box.  In the doorway of the little shop, young Grindley
+paused and raised his hat.
+
+"Mrs. Postwhistle?"
+
+The lady, from her chair behind the counter, rose slowly.
+
+"I am Mr. Nathaniel Grindley, the new assistant."
+
+The weak-kneed wastrel let fall the box with a thud upon the floor.  Mrs.
+Postwhistle looked her new assistant up and down.
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Postwhistle.  "Well, I shouldn't 'ave felt instinctively
+it must be you, not if I'd 'ad to pick you out of a crowd.  But if you
+tell me so, why, I suppose you are.  Come in."
+
+The weak-kneed wastrel, receiving to his astonishment a shilling,
+departed.
+
+Grindley senior had selected wisely.  Mrs. Postwhistle's theory was that
+although very few people in this world understood their own business,
+they understood it better than anyone else could understand it for them.
+If handsome, well-educated young gentlemen, who gave shillings to
+wastrels, felt they wanted to become smart and capable grocers'
+assistants, that was their affair.  Her business was to teach them their
+work, and, for her own sake, to see that they did it.  A month went by.
+Mrs. Postwhistle found her new assistant hard-working, willing, somewhat
+clumsy, but with a smile and a laugh that transformed mistakes, for which
+another would have been soundly rated, into welcome variations of the
+day's monotony.
+
+"If you were the sort of woman that cared to make your fortune," said one
+William Clodd, an old friend of Mrs. Postwhistle's, young Grindley having
+descended into the cellar to grind coffee, "I'd tell you what to do.  Take
+a bun-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of a girls' school, and put
+that assistant of yours in the window.  You'd do a roaring business."
+
+"There's a mystery about 'im," said Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"Know what it is?"
+
+"If I knew what it was, I shouldn't be calling it a mystery," replied
+Mrs. Postwhistle, who was a stylist in her way.
+
+"How did you get him?  Win him in a raffle?"
+
+"Jones, the agent, sent 'im to me all in a 'urry.  An assistant is what I
+really wanted, not an apprentice; but the premium was good, and the
+references everything one could desire."
+
+"Grindley, Grindley," murmured Clodd.  "Any relation to the Sauce, I
+wonder?"
+
+"A bit more wholesome, I should say, from the look of him," thought Mrs.
+Postwhistle.
+
+The question of a post office to meet its growing need had long been
+under discussion by the neighbourhood.  Mrs. Postwhistle was approached
+upon the subject.  Grindley junior, eager for anything that might bring
+variety into his new, cramped existence, undertook to qualify himself.
+
+Within two months the arrangements were complete.  Grindley junior
+divided his time between dispensing groceries and despatching telegrams
+and letters, and was grateful for the change.
+
+Grindley junior's mind was fixed upon the fashioning of a cornucopia to
+receive a quarter of a pound of moist.  The customer, an extremely young
+lady, was seeking to hasten his operations by tapping incessantly with a
+penny on the counter.  It did not hurry him; it only worried him.
+Grindley junior had not acquired facility in the fashioning of
+cornucopias--the vertex would invariably become unrolled at the last
+moment, allowing the contents to dribble out on to the floor or counter.
+Grindley junior was sweet-tempered as a rule, but when engaged upon the
+fashioning of a cornucopia, was irritable.
+
+"Hurry up, old man!" urged the extremely young lady.  "I've got another
+appointment in less than half an hour."
+
+"Oh, damn the thing!" said Grindley junior, as the paper for the fourth
+time reverted to its original shape.
+
+An older lady, standing behind the extremely young lady and holding a
+telegram-form in her hand, looked indignant.
+
+"Temper, temper," remarked the extremely young lady in reproving tone.
+
+The fifth time was more successful.  The extremely young lady went out,
+commenting upon the waste of time always resulting when boys were
+employed to do the work of men.  The older lady, a haughty person, handed
+across her telegram with the request that it should be sent off at once.
+
+Grindley junior took his pencil from his pocket and commenced to count.
+
+"_Digniori_, not _digniorus_," commented Grindley junior, correcting the
+word, "_datur digniori_, dative singular."  Grindley junior, still
+irritable from the struggle with the cornucopia, spoke sharply.
+
+The haughty lady withdrew her eyes from a spot some ten miles beyond the
+back of the shop, where hitherto they had been resting, and fixed them
+for the first time upon Grindley junior.
+
+"Thank you," said the haughty lady.
+
+Grindley junior looked up and immediately, to his annoyance, felt that he
+was blushing.  Grindley junior blushed easily--it annoyed him very much.
+
+The haughty young lady also blushed.  She did not often blush; when she
+did, she felt angry with herself.
+
+"A shilling and a penny," demanded Grindley junior.
+
+The haughty young lady counted out the money and departed.  Grindley
+junior, peeping from behind a tin of Abernethy biscuits, noticed that as
+she passed the window she turned and looked back.  She was a very pretty,
+haughty lady.  Grindley junior rather admired dark, level brows and
+finely cut, tremulous lips, especially when combined with a mass of soft,
+brown hair, and a rich olive complexion that flushed and paled as one
+looked at it.
+
+"Might send that telegram off if you've nothing else to do, and there's
+no particular reason for keeping it back," suggested Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"It's only just been handed in," explained Grindley junior, somewhat
+hurt.
+
+"You've been looking at it for the last five minutes by the clock," said
+Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+Grindley junior sat down to the machine.  The name and address of the
+sender was Helvetia Appleyard, Nevill's Court.
+
+Three days passed--singularly empty days they appeared to Grindley
+junior.  On the fourth, Helvetia Appleyard had occasion to despatch
+another telegram--this time entirely in English.
+
+"One-and-fourpence," sighed Grindley junior.
+
+Miss Appleyard drew forth her purse.  The shop was empty.
+
+"How did you come to know Latin?" inquired Miss Appleyard in quite a
+casual tone.
+
+"I picked up a little at school.  It was a phrase I happened to
+remember," confessed Grindley junior, wondering why he should be feeling
+ashamed of himself.
+
+"I am always sorry," said Miss Appleyard, "when I see anyone content with
+the lower life whose talents might, perhaps, fit him for the higher."
+Something about the tone and manner of Miss Appleyard reminded Grindley
+junior of his former Rector.  Each seemed to have arrived by different
+roads at the same philosophical aloofness from the world, tempered by
+chastened interest in human phenomena.  "Would you like to try to raise
+yourself--to improve yourself--to educate yourself?"
+
+An unseen little rogue, who was enjoying himself immensely, whispered to
+Grindley junior to say nothing but "Yes," he should.
+
+"Will you let me help you?" asked Miss Appleyard.  And the simple and
+heartfelt gratitude with which Grindley junior closed upon the offer
+proved to Miss Appleyard how true it is that to do good to others is the
+highest joy.
+
+Miss Appleyard had come prepared for possible acceptance.  "You had
+better begin with this," thought Miss Appleyard.  "I have marked the
+passages that you should learn by heart.  Make a note of anything you do
+not understand, and I will explain it to you when--when next I happen to
+be passing."
+
+Grindley junior took the book--_Bell's Introduction to the Study of the
+Classics_, _for Use of Beginners_--and held it between both hands.  Its
+price was ninepence, but Grindley junior appeared to regard it as a
+volume of great value.
+
+"It will be hard work at first," Miss Appleyard warned him; "but you must
+persevere.  I have taken an interest in you; you must try not to
+disappoint me."
+
+And Miss Appleyard, feeling all the sensations of a Hypatia, departed,
+taking light with her and forgetting to pay for the telegram.  Miss
+Appleyard belonged to the class that young ladies who pride themselves on
+being tiresomely ignorant and foolish sneer at as "blue-stockings"; that
+is to say, possessing brains, she had felt the necessity of using them.
+Solomon Appleyard, widower, a sensible old gentleman, prospering in the
+printing business, and seeing no necessity for a woman regarding herself
+as nothing but a doll, a somewhat uninteresting plaything the newness
+once worn off, thankfully encouraged her.  Miss Appleyard had returned
+from Girton wise in many things, but not in knowledge of the world, which
+knowledge, too early acquired, does not always make for good in young man
+or woman.  A serious little virgin, Miss Appleyard's ambition was to help
+the human race.  What more useful work could have come to her hand than
+the raising of this poor but intelligent young grocer's assistant unto
+the knowledge and the love of higher things.  That Grindley junior
+happened to be an exceedingly good-looking and charming young grocer's
+assistant had nothing to do with the matter, so Miss Appleyard would have
+informed you.  In her own reasoning she was convinced that her interest
+in him would have been the same had he been the least attractive of his
+sex.  That there could be danger in such relationship never occurred to
+her.
+
+Miss Appleyard, a convinced Radical, could not conceive the possibility
+of a grocer's assistant regarding the daughter of a well-to-do printer in
+any other light than that of a graciously condescending patron.  That
+there could be danger to herself! you would have been sorry you had
+suggested the idea.  The expression of lofty scorn would have made you
+feel yourself contemptible.
+
+Miss Appleyard's judgment of mankind was justified; no more promising
+pupil could have been selected.  It was really marvellous the progress
+made by Grindley junior, under the tutelage of Helvetia Appleyard.  His
+earnestness, his enthusiasm, it quite touched the heart of Helvetia
+Appleyard.  There were many points, it is true, that puzzled Grindley
+junior.  Each time the list of them grew longer.  But when Helvetia
+Appleyard explained them, all became clear.  She marvelled herself at her
+own wisdom, that in a moment made darkness luminous to this young man;
+his rapt attention while she talked, it was most encouraging.  The boy
+must surely be a genius.  To think that but for her intuition he might
+have remained wasted in a grocer's shop!  To rescue such a gem from
+oblivion, to polish it, was surely the duty of a conscientious Hypatia.
+Two visits--three visits a week to the little shop in Rolls Court were
+quite inadequate, so many passages there were requiring elucidation.
+London in early morning became their classroom: the great, wide, empty,
+silent streets; the mist-curtained parks, the silence broken only by the
+blackbirds' amorous whistle, the thrushes' invitation to delight; the old
+gardens, hidden behind narrow ways.  Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia
+would rest upon a seat, no living creature within sight, save perhaps a
+passing policeman or some dissipated cat.  Janet Helvetia would expound.
+Nathaniel George, his fine eyes fixed on hers, seemed never to tire of
+drinking in her wisdom.
+
+There were times when Janet Helvetia, to reassure herself as to the
+maidenly correctness of her behaviour, had to recall quite forcibly the
+fact that she was the daughter of Solomon Appleyard, owner of the big
+printing establishment; and he a simple grocer.  One day, raised a little
+in the social scale, thanks to her, Nathaniel George would marry someone
+in his own rank of life.  Reflecting upon the future of Nathaniel George,
+Janet Helvetia could not escape a shade of sadness.  It was difficult to
+imagine precisely the wife she would have chosen for Nathaniel George.
+She hoped he would do nothing foolish.  Rising young men so often marry
+wives that hamper rather than help them.
+
+One Sunday morning in late autumn, they walked and talked in the shady
+garden of Lincoln's Inn.  Greek they thought it was they had been
+talking; as a matter of fact, a much older language.  A young gardener
+was watering flowers, and as they passed him he grinned.  It was not an
+offensive grin, rather a sympathetic grin; but Miss Appleyard didn't like
+being grinned at.  What was there to grin at?  Her personal appearance?
+some _gaucherie_ in her dress?  Impossible.  No lady in all St. Dunstan
+was ever more precise.  She glanced at her companion: a clean-looking,
+well-groomed, well-dressed youth.  Suddenly it occurred to Miss Appleyard
+that she and Grindley junior were holding each other's hand.  Miss
+Appleyard was justly indignant.
+
+"How dare you!" said Miss Appleyard.  "I am exceedingly angry with you.
+How dare you!"
+
+The olive skin was scarlet.  There were tears in the hazel eyes.
+
+"Leave me this minute!" commanded Miss Appleyard.
+
+Instead of which, Grindley junior seized both her hands.
+
+"I love you!  I adore you!  I worship you!" poured forth young Grindley,
+forgetful of all Miss Appleyard had ever told him concerning the folly of
+tautology.
+
+"You had no right," said Miss Appleyard.
+
+"I couldn't help it," pleaded young Grindley.  "And that isn't the
+worst."
+
+Miss Appleyard paled visibly.  For a grocer's assistant to dare to fall
+in love with her, especially after all the trouble she had taken with
+him!  What could be worse?
+
+"I'm not a grocer," continued young Grindley, deeply conscious of crime.
+"I mean, not a real grocer."
+
+And Grindley junior then and there made a clean breast of the whole sad,
+terrible tale of shameless deceit, practised by the greatest villain the
+world had ever produced, upon the noblest and most beautiful maiden that
+ever turned grim London town into a fairy city of enchanted ways.
+
+Not at first could Miss Appleyard entirely grasp it; not till hours
+later, when she sat alone in her own room, where, fortunately for
+himself, Grindley junior was not, did the whole force and meaning of the
+thing come home to her.  It was a large room, taking up half of the top
+story of the big Georgian house in Nevill's Court; but even as it was,
+Miss Appleyard felt cramped.
+
+"For a year--for nearly a whole year," said Miss Appleyard, addressing
+the bust of William Shakespeare, "have I been slaving my life out,
+teaching him elementary Latin and the first five books of Euclid!"
+
+As it has been remarked, it was fortunate for Grindley junior he was out
+of reach.  The bust of William Shakespeare maintained its irritating
+aspect of benign philosophy.
+
+"I suppose I should," mused Miss Appleyard, "if he had told me at
+first--as he ought to have told me--of course I should naturally have had
+nothing more to do with him.  I suppose," mused Miss Appleyard, "a man in
+love, if he is really in love, doesn't quite know what he's doing.  I
+suppose one ought to make allowances.  But, oh! when I think of it--"
+
+And then Grindley junior's guardian angel must surely have slipped into
+the room, for Miss Appleyard, irritated beyond endurance at the
+philosophical indifference of the bust of William Shakespeare, turned
+away from it, and as she did so, caught sight of herself in the looking-
+glass.  Miss Appleyard approached the glass a little nearer.  A woman's
+hair is never quite as it should be.  Miss Appleyard, standing before the
+glass, began, she knew not why, to find reasons excusing Grindley junior.
+After all, was not forgiveness an excellent thing in woman?  None of us
+are quite perfect.  The guardian angel of Grindley junior seized the
+opportunity.
+
+That evening Solomon Appleyard sat upright in his chair, feeling
+confused.  So far as he could understand it, a certain young man, a
+grocer's assistant, but not a grocer's assistant--but that, of course,
+was not his fault, his father being an old brute--had behaved most
+abominably; but not, on reflection, as badly as he might have done, and
+had acted on the whole very honourably, taking into consideration the
+fact that one supposed he could hardly help it.  Helvetia was, of course,
+very indignant with him, but on the other hand, did not quite see what
+else she could have done, she being not at all sure whether she really
+cared for him or whether she didn't; that everything had been quite
+proper and would not have happened if she had known it; that everything
+was her fault, except most things, which weren't; but that of the two she
+blamed herself entirely, seeing that she could not have guessed anything
+of the kind.  And did he, Solomon Appleyard, think that she ought to be
+very angry and never marry anybody else, or was she justified in
+overlooking it and engaging herself to the only man she felt she could
+ever love?
+
+"You mustn't think, Dad, that I meant to deceive you.  I should have told
+you at the beginning--you know I would--if it hadn't all happened so
+suddenly."
+
+"Let me see," said Solomon Appleyard, "did you tell me his name, or
+didn't you?"
+
+"Nathaniel," said Miss Appleyard.  "Didn't I mention it?"
+
+"Don't happen to know his surname, do you," inquired her father.
+
+"Grindley," explained Miss Appleyard--"the son of Grindley, the Sauce
+man."
+
+Miss Appleyard experienced one of the surprises of her life.  Never
+before to her recollection had her father thwarted a single wish of her
+life.  A widower for the last twelve years, his chief delight had been to
+humour her.  His voice, as he passionately swore that never with his
+consent should his daughter marry the son of Hezekiah Grindley, sounded
+strange to her.  Pleadings, even tears, for the first time in her life
+proved fruitless.
+
+Here was a pretty kettle of fish!  That Grindley junior should defy his
+own parent, risk possibly the loss of his inheritance, had seemed to both
+a not improper proceeding.  When Nathaniel George had said with fine
+enthusiasm: "Let him keep his money if he will; I'll make my own way;
+there isn't enough money in the world to pay for losing you!"  Janet
+Helvetia, though she had expressed disapproval of such unfilial attitude,
+had in secret sympathised.  But for her to disregard the wishes of her
+own doting father was not to be thought of.  What was to be done?
+
+Perhaps one Peter Hope, residing in Gough Square hard by, might help
+young folks in sore dilemma with wise counsel.  Peter Hope, editor and
+part proprietor of _Good Humour_, one penny weekly, was much esteemed by
+Solomon Appleyard, printer and publisher of aforesaid paper.
+
+"A good fellow, old Hope," Solomon would often impress upon his managing
+clerk.  "Don't worry him more than you can help; things will improve.  We
+can trust him."
+
+Peter Hope sat at his desk, facing Miss Appleyard.  Grindley junior sat
+on the cushioned seat beneath the middle window.  _Good Humour's_ sub-
+editor stood before the fire, her hands behind her back.
+
+The case appeared to Peter Hope to be one of exceeding difficulty.
+
+"Of course," explained Miss Appleyard, "I shall never marry without my
+father's consent."
+
+Peter Hope thought the resolution most proper.
+
+"On the other hand," continued Miss Appleyard, "nothing shall induce me
+to marry a man I do not love."  Miss Appleyard thought the probabilities
+were that she would end by becoming a female missionary.
+
+Peter Hope's experience had led him to the conclusion that young people
+sometimes changed their mind.
+
+The opinion of the House, clearly though silently expressed, was that
+Peter Hope's experience, as regarded this particular case, counted for
+nothing.
+
+"I shall go straight to the Governor," explained Grindley junior, "and
+tell him that I consider myself engaged for life to Miss Appleyard.  I
+know what will happen--I know the sort of idea he has got into his head.
+He will disown me, and I shall go off to Africa."
+
+Peter Hope was unable to see how Grindley junior's disappearance into the
+wilds of Africa was going to assist the matter under discussion.
+
+Grindley junior's view was that the wilds of Africa would afford a
+fitting background to the passing away of a blighted existence.
+
+Peter Hope had a suspicion that Grindley junior had for the moment parted
+company with that sweet reasonableness that otherwise, so Peter Hope felt
+sure, was Grindley junior's guiding star.
+
+"I mean it, sir," reasserted Grindley junior.  "I am--" Grindley junior
+was about to add "well educated"; but divining that education was a topic
+not pleasing at the moment to the ears of Helvetia Appleyard, had tact
+enough to substitute "not a fool.  I can earn my own living; and I should
+like to get away."
+
+"It seems to me--" said the sub-editor.
+
+"Now, Tommy--I mean Jane," warned her Peter Hope.  He always called her
+Jane in company, unless he was excited.  "I know what you are going to
+say.  I won't have it."
+
+"I was only going to say--" urged the sub-editor in tone of one suffering
+injustice.
+
+"I quite know what you were going to say," retorted Peter hotly.  "I can
+see it by your chin.  You are going to take their part--and suggest their
+acting undutifully towards their parents."
+
+"I wasn't," returned the sub-editor.  "I was only--"
+
+"You were," persisted Peter.  "I ought not to have allowed you to be
+present.  I might have known you would interfere."
+
+"--going to say we are in want of some help in the office.  You know we
+are.  And that if Mr. Grindley would be content with a small salary--"
+
+"Small salary be hanged!" snarled Peter.
+
+"--there would be no need for his going to Africa."
+
+"And how would that help us?" demanded Peter.  "Even if the boy were
+so--so headstrong, so unfilial as to defy his father, who has worked for
+him all these years, how would that remove the obstacle of Mr.
+Appleyard's refusal?"
+
+"Why, don't you see--" explained the sub-editor.
+
+"No, I don't," snapped Peter.
+
+"If, on his declaring to his father that nothing will ever induce him to
+marry any other woman but Miss Appleyard, his father disowns him, as he
+thinks it likely--"
+
+"A dead cert!" was Grindley junior's conviction.
+
+"Very well; he is no longer old Grindley's son, and what possible
+objection can Mr. Appleyard have to him then?"
+
+Peter Hope arose and expounded at length and in suitable language the
+folly and uselessness of the scheme.
+
+But what chance had ever the wisdom of Age against the enthusiasm of
+Youth, reaching for its object.  Poor Peter, expostulating, was swept
+into the conspiracy.  Grindley junior the next morning stood before his
+father in the private office in High Holborn.
+
+"I am sorry, sir," said Grindley junior, "if I have proved a
+disappointment to you."
+
+"Damn your sympathy!" said Grindley senior.  "Keep it till you are asked
+for it."
+
+"I hope we part friends, sir," said Grindley junior, holding out his
+hand.
+
+"Why do you irate me?" asked Grindley senior.  "I have thought of nothing
+but you these five-and-twenty years."
+
+"I don't, sir," answered Grindley junior.  "I can't say I love you.  It
+did not seem to me you--you wanted it.  But I like you, sir, and I
+respect you.  And--and I'm sorry to have to hurt you, sir."
+
+"And you are determined to give up all your prospects, all the money, for
+the sake of this--this girl?"
+
+"It doesn't seem like giving up anything, sir," replied Grindley junior,
+simply.
+
+"It isn't so much as I thought it was going to be," said the old man,
+after a pause.  "Perhaps it is for the best.  I might have been more
+obstinate if things had been going all right.  The Lord has chastened
+me."
+
+"Isn't the business doing well, Dad?" asked the young man, with sorrow in
+his voice.
+
+"What's it got to do with you?" snapped his father.  "You've cut yourself
+adrift from it.  You leave me now I am going down."
+
+Grindley junior, not knowing what to say, put his arms round the little
+old man.
+
+And in this way Tommy's brilliant scheme fell through and came to naught.
+Instead, old Grindley visited once again the big house in Nevill's Court,
+and remained long closeted with old Solomon in the office on the second
+floor.  It was late in the evening when Solomon opened the door and
+called upstairs to Janet Helvetia to come down.
+
+"I used to know you long ago," said Hezekiah Grindley, rising.  "You were
+quite a little girl then."
+
+Later, the troublesome Sauce disappeared entirely, cut out by newer
+flavours.  Grindley junior studied the printing business.  It almost
+seemed as if old Appleyard had been waiting but for this.  Some six
+months later they found him dead in his counting-house.  Grindley junior
+became the printer and publisher of _Good Humour_.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE FOURTH--Miss Ramsbotham gives her Services
+
+
+To regard Miss Ramsbotham as a marriageable quantity would have occurred
+to few men.  Endowed by Nature with every feminine quality calculated to
+inspire liking, she had, on the other hand, been disinherited of every
+attribute calculated to excite passion.  An ugly woman has for some men
+an attraction; the proof is ever present to our eyes.  Miss Ramsbotham
+was plain but pleasant looking.  Large, healthy in mind and body,
+capable, self-reliant, and cheerful, blessed with a happy disposition
+together with a keen sense of humour, there was about her absolutely
+nothing for tenderness to lay hold of.  An ideal wife, she was an
+impossible sweetheart.  Every man was her friend.  The suggestion that
+any man could be her lover she herself would have greeted with a clear,
+ringing laugh.
+
+Not that she held love in despite; for such folly she was possessed of
+far too much sound sense.  "To have somebody in love with you--somebody
+strong and good," so she would confess to her few close intimates, a
+dreamy expression clouding for an instant her broad, sunny face, "why, it
+must be just lovely!"  For Miss Ramsbotham was prone to American
+phraseology, and had even been at some pains, during a six months'
+journey through the States (whither she had been commissioned by a
+conscientious trade journal seeking reliable information concerning the
+condition of female textile workers) to acquire a slight but decided
+American accent.  It was her one affectation, but assumed, as one might
+feel certain, for a practical and legitimate object.
+
+"You can have no conception," she would explain, laughing, "what a help I
+find it.  'I'm 'Muriken' is the 'Civis Romanus sum' of the modern woman's
+world.  It opens every door to us.  If I ring the bell and say, 'Oh, if
+you please, I have come to interview Mr. So-and-So for such-and-such a
+paper,' the footman looks through me at the opposite side of the street,
+and tells me to wait in the hall while he inquires if Mr. So-and-So will
+see me or not.  But if I say, 'That's my keerd, young man.  You tell your
+master Miss Ramsbotham is waiting for him in the showroom, and will take
+it real kind if he'll just bustle himself,' the poor fellow walks
+backwards till he stumbles against the bottom stair, and my gentleman
+comes down with profuse apologies for having kept me waiting three
+minutes and a half.
+
+"'And to be in love with someone," she would continue, "someone great
+that one could look up to and honour and worship--someone that would fill
+one's whole life, make it beautiful, make every day worth living, I think
+that would be better still.  To work merely for one's self, to think
+merely for one's self, it is so much less interesting."
+
+Then, at some such point of the argument, Miss Ramsbotham would jump up
+from her chair and shake herself indignantly.
+
+"Why, what nonsense I'm talking," she would tell herself, and her
+listeners.  "I make a very fair income, have a host of friends, and enjoy
+every hour of my life.  I should like to have been pretty or handsome, of
+course; but no one can have all the good things of this world, and I have
+my brains.  At one time, perhaps, yes; but now--no, honestly I would not
+change myself."
+
+Miss Ramsbotham was sorry that no man had ever fallen in love with her,
+but that she could understand.
+
+"It is quite clear to me."  So she had once unburdened herself to her
+bosom friend.  "Man for the purposes of the race has been given two kinds
+of love, between which, according to his opportunities and temperament,
+he is free to choose: he can fall down upon his knees and adore physical
+beauty (for Nature ignores entirely our mental side), or he can take
+delight in circling with his protecting arm the weak and helpless.  Now,
+I make no appeal to either instinct.  I possess neither the charm nor
+beauty to attract--"
+
+"Beauty," reminded her the bosom friend, consolingly, "dwells in the
+beholder's eye."
+
+"My dear," cheerfully replied Miss Ramsbotham, "it would have to be an
+eye of the range and capacity Sam Weller frankly owned up to not
+possessing--a patent double-million magnifying, capable of seeing through
+a deal board and round the corner sort of eye--to detect any beauty in
+me.  And I am much too big and sensible for any man not a fool ever to
+think of wanting to take care of me.
+
+"I believe," remembered Miss Ramsbotham, "if it does not sound like idle
+boasting, I might have had a husband, of a kind, if Fate had not
+compelled me to save his life.  I met him one year at Huyst, a small,
+quiet watering-place on the Dutch coast.  He would walk always half a
+step behind me, regarding me out of the corner of his eye quite
+approvingly at times.  He was a widower--a good little man, devoted to
+his three charming children.  They took an immense fancy to me, and I
+really think I could have got on with him.  I am very adaptable, as you
+know.  But it was not to be.  He got out of his depth one morning, and
+unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim.
+I knew what the result would be.  You remember Labiche's comedy, _Les
+Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon_?  Of course, every man hates having had his
+life saved, after it is over; and you can imagine how he must hate having
+it saved by a woman.  But what was I to do?  In either case he would be
+lost to me, whether I let him drown or whether I rescued him.  So, as it
+really made no difference, I rescued him.  He was very grateful, and left
+the next morning.
+
+"It is my destiny.  No man has ever fallen in love with me, and no man
+ever will.  I used to worry myself about it when I was younger.  As a
+child I hugged to my bosom for years an observation I had overheard an
+aunt of mine whisper to my mother one afternoon as they sat knitting and
+talking, not thinking I was listening.  'You never can tell,' murmured my
+aunt, keeping her eyes carefully fixed upon her needles; 'children change
+so.  I have known the plainest girls grow up into quite beautiful women.
+I should not worry about it if I were you--not yet awhile.'  My mother
+was not at all a bad-looking woman, and my father was decidedly handsome;
+so there seemed no reason why I should not hope.  I pictured myself the
+ugly duckling of Andersen's fairy-tale, and every morning on waking I
+would run straight to my glass and try to persuade myself that the
+feathers of the swan were beginning at last to show themselves."  Miss
+Ramsbotham laughed, a genuine laugh of amusement, for of self-pity not a
+trace was now remaining to her.
+
+"Later I plucked hope again," continued Miss Ramsbotham her confession,
+"from the reading of a certain school of fiction more popular twenty
+years ago than now.  In these romances the heroine was never what you
+would call beautiful, unless in common with the hero you happened to
+possess exceptional powers of observation.  But she was better than that,
+she was good.  I do not regard as time wasted the hours I spent studying
+this quaint literature.  It helped me, I am sure, to form habits that
+have since been of service to me.  I made a point, when any young man
+visitor happened to be staying with us, of rising exceptionally early in
+the morning, so that I always appeared at the breakfast-table fresh,
+cheerful, and carefully dressed, with, when possible, a dew-besprinkled
+flower in my hair to prove that I had already been out in the garden.  The
+effort, as far as the young man visitor was concerned, was always thrown
+away; as a general rule, he came down late himself, and generally too
+drowsy to notice anything much.  But it was excellent practice for me.  I
+wake now at seven o'clock as a matter of course, whatever time I go to
+bed.  I made my own dresses and most of our cakes, and took care to let
+everybody know it.  Though I say it who should not, I play and sing
+rather well.  I certainly was never a fool.  I had no little brothers and
+sisters to whom to be exceptionally devoted, but I had my cousins about
+the house as much as possible, and damaged their characters, if anything,
+by over-indulgence.  My dear, it never caught even a curate!  I am not
+one of those women to run down men; I think them delightful creatures,
+and in a general way I find them very intelligent.  But where their
+hearts are concerned it is the girl with the frizzy hair, who wants two
+people to help her over the stile, that is their idea of an angel.  No
+man could fall in love with me; he couldn't if he tried.  That I can
+understand; but"--Miss Ramsbotham sunk her voice to a more confidential
+tone--"what I cannot understand is that I have never fallen in love with
+any man, because I like them all."
+
+"You have given the explanation yourself," suggested the bosom friend--one
+Susan Fossett, the "Aunt Emma" of _The Ladies' Journal_, a nice woman,
+but talkative.  "You are too sensible."
+
+Miss Ramsbotham shook her head, "I should just love to fall in love.  When
+I think about it, I feel quite ashamed of myself for not having done so."
+
+Whether it was this idea, namely, that it was her duty, or whether it was
+that passion came to her, unsought, somewhat late in life, and therefore
+all the stronger, she herself would perhaps have been unable to declare.
+Certain only it is that at over thirty years of age this clever,
+sensible, clear-seeing woman fell to sighing and blushing, starting and
+stammering at the sounding of a name, as though for all the world she had
+been a love-sick girl in her teens.
+
+Susan Fossett, her bosom friend, brought the strange tidings to Bohemia
+one foggy November afternoon, her opportunity being a tea-party given by
+Peter Hope to commemorate the birthday of his adopted daughter and sub-
+editor, Jane Helen, commonly called Tommy.  The actual date of Tommy's
+birthday was known only to the gods; but out of the London mist to
+wifeless, childless Peter she had come the evening of a certain November
+the eighteenth, and therefore by Peter and his friends November the
+eighteenth had been marked upon the calendar as a day on which they
+should rejoice together.
+
+"It is bound to leak out sooner or later," Susan Fossett was convinced,
+"so I may as well tell you: that gaby Mary Ramsbotham has got herself
+engaged."
+
+"Nonsense!" was Peter Hope's involuntary ejaculation.
+
+"Precisely what I mean to tell her the very next time I see her," added
+Susan.
+
+"Who to?" demanded Tommy.
+
+"You mean 'to whom.'  The preeposition governs the objective case,"
+corrected her James Douglas McTear, commonly called "The Wee Laddie," who
+himself wrote English better than he spoke it.
+
+"I meant 'to whom,'" explained Tommy.
+
+"Ye didna say it," persisted the Wee Laddie.
+
+"I don't know to whom," replied Miss Ramsbotham's bosom friend, sipping
+tea and breathing indignation.  "To something idiotic and incongruous
+that will make her life a misery to her."
+
+Somerville, the briefless, held that in the absence of all data such
+conclusion was unjustifiable.
+
+"If it had been to anything sensible," was Miss Fossett's opinion, "she
+would not have kept me in the dark about it, to spring it upon me like a
+bombshell.  I've never had so much as a hint from her until I received
+this absurd scrawl an hour ago."
+
+Miss Fossett produced from her bag a letter written in pencil.
+
+"There can be no harm in your hearing it," was Miss Fossett's excuse; "it
+will give you an idea of the state of the poor thing's mind."
+
+The tea-drinkers left their cups and gathered round her.  "Dear Susan,"
+read Miss Fossett, "I shall not be able to be with you to-morrow.  Please
+get me out of it nicely.  I can't remember at the moment what it is.
+You'll be surprised to hear that I'm _engaged_--to be married, I mean, I
+can hardly _realise_ it.  I hardly seem to know where I am.  Have just
+made up my mind to run down to Yorkshire and see grandmamma.  I must do
+_something_.  I must _talk_ to _somebody_ and--forgive me, dear--but you
+_are_ so sensible, and just now--well I don't _feel_ sensible.  Will tell
+you all about it when I see you--next week, perhaps.  You must _try_ to
+like him.  He is _so_ handsome and _really_ clever--in his own way.  Don't
+scold me.  I never thought it possible that _anyone_ could be so happy.
+It's quite a different sort of happiness to _any_ other sort of
+happiness.  I don't know how to describe it.  Please ask Burcot to let me
+off the antequarian congress.  I feel I should do it badly.  I am so
+thankful he has _no_ relatives--in England.  I should have been so
+_terribly_ nervous.  Twelve hours ago I could not have _dreamt_ of it,
+and now I walk on tiptoe for fear of waking up.  Did I leave my
+chinchilla at your rooms?  Don't be angry with me.  I should have told
+you if I had known.  In haste.  Yours, Mary."
+
+"It's dated from Marylebone Road, and yesterday afternoon she did leave
+her chinchilla in my rooms, which makes me think it really must be from
+Mary Ramsbotham.  Otherwise I should have my doubts," added Miss Fossett,
+as she folded up the letter and replaced it in her bag.
+
+"Id is love!" was the explanation of Dr. William Smith, his round, red
+face illuminated with poetic ecstasy.  "Love has gone to her--has
+dransformed her once again into the leedle maid."
+
+"Love," retorted Susan Fossett, "doesn't transform an intelligent,
+educated woman into a person who writes a letter all in jerks, underlines
+every other word, spells antiquarian with an 'e,' and Burcott's name,
+whom she has known for the last eight years, with only one 't.'  The
+woman has gone stark, staring mad!"
+
+"We must wait until we have seen him," was Peter's judicious view.  "I
+should be so glad to think that the dear lady was happy."
+
+"So should I," added Miss Fossett drily.
+
+"One of the most sensible women I have ever met," commented William
+Clodd.  "Lucky man, whoever he is.  Half wish I'd thought of it myself."
+
+"I am not saying that he isn't," retorted Miss Fossett.  "It isn't him
+I'm worrying about."
+
+"I preesume you mean 'he,'" suggested the Wee Laddie.  "The verb 'to
+be'--"
+
+"For goodness' sake," suggested Miss Fossett to Tommy, "give that man
+something to eat or drink.  That's the worst of people who take up
+grammar late in life.  Like all converts, they become fanatical."
+
+"She's a ripping good sort, is Mary Ramsbotham," exclaimed Grindley
+junior, printer and publisher of _Good Humour_.  "The marvel to me is
+that no man hitherto has ever had the sense to want her."
+
+"Oh, you men!" cried Miss Fossett.  "A pretty face and an empty head is
+all you want."
+
+"Must they always go together?" laughed Mrs. Grindley junior, _nee_
+Helvetia Appleyard.
+
+"Exceptions prove the rule," grunted Miss Fossett.
+
+"What a happy saying that is," smiled Mrs. Grindley junior.  "I wonder
+sometimes how conversation was ever carried on before it was invented."
+
+"De man who would fall in love wid our dear frent Mary," thought Dr.
+Smith, "he must be quite egsceptional."
+
+"You needn't talk about her as if she was a monster--I mean were,"
+corrected herself Miss Fossett, with a hasty glance towards the Wee
+Laddie.  "There isn't a man I know that's worthy of her."
+
+"I mean," explained the doctor, "dat he must be a man of character--of
+brain.  Id is de noble man dat is attracted by de noble woman."
+
+"By the chorus-girl more often," suggested Miss Fossett.
+
+"We must hope for the best," counselled Peter.  "I cannot believe that a
+clever, capable woman like Mary Ramsbotham would make a fool of herself."
+
+"From what I have seen," replied Miss Fossett, "it's just the clever
+people--as regards this particular matter--who do make fools of
+themselves."
+
+Unfortunately Miss Fossett's judgment proved to be correct.  On being
+introduced a fortnight later to Miss Ramsbotham's fiance, the impulse of
+Bohemia was to exclaim, "Great Scott!  Whatever in the name of--"  Then
+on catching sight of Miss Ramsbotham's transfigured face and trembling
+hands Bohemia recollected itself in time to murmur instead: "Delighted,
+I'm sure!" and to offer mechanical congratulations.  Reginald Peters was
+a pretty but remarkably foolish-looking lad of about two-and-twenty, with
+curly hair and receding chin; but to Miss Ramsbotham evidently a
+promising Apollo.  Her first meeting with him had taken place at one of
+the many political debating societies then in fashion, attendance at
+which Miss Ramsbotham found useful for purposes of journalistic "copy."
+Miss Ramsbotham, hitherto a Radical of pronounced views, he had succeeded
+under three months in converting into a strong supporter of the
+Gentlemanly Party.  His feeble political platitudes, which a little while
+before she would have seized upon merrily to ridicule, she now sat
+drinking in, her plain face suffused with admiration.  Away from him and
+in connection with those subjects--somewhat numerous--about which he knew
+little and cared less, she retained her sense and humour; but in his
+presence she remained comparatively speechless, gazing up into his
+somewhat watery eyes with the grateful expression of one learning wisdom
+from a master.
+
+Her absurd adoration--irritating beyond measure to her friends, and which
+even to her lover, had he possessed a grain of sense, would have appeared
+ridiculous--to Master Peters was evidently a gratification.  Of selfish,
+exacting nature, he must have found the services of this brilliant woman
+of the world of much practical advantage.  Knowing all the most
+interesting people in London, it was her pride and pleasure to introduce
+him everywhere.  Her friends put up with him for her sake; to please her
+made him welcome, did their best to like him, and disguised their
+failure.  The free entry to a places of amusement saved his limited
+purse.  Her influence, he had instinct enough to perceive, could not fail
+to be of use to him in his profession: that of a barrister.  She praised
+him to prominent solicitors, took him to tea with judges' wives,
+interested examiners on his behalf.  In return he overlooked her many
+disadvantages, and did not fail to let her know it.  Miss Ramsbotham's
+gratitude was boundless.
+
+"I do so wish I were younger and better looking," she sighed to the bosom
+friend.  "For myself, I don't mind; I have got used to it.  But it is so
+hard on Reggie.  He feels it, I know he does, though he never openly
+complains."
+
+"He would be a cad if he did," answered Susan Fossett, who having tried
+conscientiously for a month to tolerate the fellow, had in the end
+declared her inability even to do more than avoid open expression of
+cordial dislike.  "Added to which I don't quite see of what use it would
+be.  You never told him you were young and pretty, did you?"
+
+"I told him, my dear," replied Miss Ramsbotham, "the actual truth.  I
+don't want to take any credit for doing so; it seemed the best course.
+You see, unfortunately, I look my age.  With most men it would have made
+a difference.  You have no idea how good he is.  He assured me he had
+engaged himself to me with his eyes open, and that there was no need to
+dwell upon unpleasant topics.  It is so wonderful to me that he should
+care for me--he who could have half the women in London at his feet."
+
+"Yes, he's the type that would attract them, I daresay," agreed Susan
+Fossett.  "But are you quite sure that he does?--care for you, I mean."
+
+"My dear," returned Miss Ramsbotham, "you remember Rochefoucauld's
+definition.  'One loves, the other consents to be loved.'  If he will
+only let me do that I shall be content.  It is more than I had any right
+to expect."
+
+"Oh, you are a fool," told her bluntly her bosom friend.
+
+"I know I am," admitted Miss Ramsbotham; "but I had no idea that being a
+fool was so delightful."
+
+Bohemia grew day by day more indignant and amazed.  Young Peters was not
+even a gentleman.  All the little offices of courtship he left to her.  It
+was she who helped him on with his coat, and afterwards adjusted her own
+cloak; she who carried the parcel, she who followed into and out of the
+restaurant.  Only when he thought anyone was watching would he make any
+attempt to behave to her with even ordinary courtesy.  He bullied her,
+contradicted her in public, ignored her openly.  Bohemia fumed with
+impotent rage, yet was bound to confess that so far as Miss Ramsbotham
+herself was concerned he had done more to make her happy than had ever
+all Bohemia put together.  A tender light took up its dwelling in her
+eyes, which for the first time it was noticed were singularly deep and
+expressive.  The blood, of which she possessed if anything too much, now
+came and went, so that her cheeks, in place of their insistent red, took
+on a varied pink and white.  Life had entered her thick dark hair, giving
+to it shade and shadow.
+
+The woman began to grow younger.  She put on flesh.  Sex, hitherto
+dormant, began to show itself; femininities peeped out.  New tones,
+suggesting possibilities, crept into her voice.  Bohemia congratulated
+itself that the affair, after all, might turn out well.
+
+Then Master Peters spoiled everything by showing a better side to his
+nature, and, careless of all worldly considerations, falling in love
+himself, honestly, with a girl at the bun shop.  He did the best thing
+under the circumstances that he could have done: told Miss Ramsbotham the
+plain truth, and left the decision in her hands.
+
+Miss Ramsbotham acted as anyone who knew her would have foretold.
+Possibly, in the silence of her delightful little four-roomed flat over
+the tailor's shop in Marylebone Road, her sober, worthy maid dismissed
+for a holiday, she may have shed some tears; but, if so, no trace of them
+was allowed to mar the peace of mind of Mr. Peters.  She merely thanked
+him for being frank with her, and by a little present pain saving them
+both a future of disaster.  It was quite understandable; she knew he had
+never really been in love with her.  She had thought him the type of man
+that never does fall in love, as the word is generally understood--Miss
+Ramsbotham did not add, with anyone except himself--and had that been the
+case, and he content merely to be loved, they might have been happy
+together.  As it was--well, it was fortunate he had found out the truth
+before it was too late.  Now, would he take her advice?
+
+Mr. Peters was genuinely grateful, as well he might be, and would consent
+to any suggestion that Miss Ramsbotham might make; felt he had behaved
+shabbily, was very much ashamed of himself, would be guided in all things
+by Miss Ramsbotham, whom he should always regard as the truest of
+friends, and so on.
+
+Miss Ramsbotham's suggestion was this: Mr. Peters, no more robust of body
+than of mind, had been speaking for some time past of travel.  Having
+nothing to do now but to wait for briefs, why not take this opportunity
+of visiting his only well-to-do relative, a Canadian farmer.  Meanwhile,
+let Miss Peggy leave the bun shop and take up her residence in Miss
+Ramsbotham's flat.  Let there be no engagement--merely an understanding.
+The girl was pretty, charming, good, Miss Ramsbotham felt sure; but--well,
+a little education, a little training in manners and behaviour would not
+be amiss, would it?  If, on returning at the end of six months or a year,
+Mr. Peters was still of the same mind, and Peggy also wishful, the affair
+would be easier, would it not?
+
+There followed further expressions of eternal gratitude.  Miss Ramsbotham
+swept all such aside.  It would be pleasant to have a bright young girl
+to live with her; teaching, moulding such an one would be a pleasant
+occupation.
+
+And thus it came to pass that Mr. Reginald Peters disappeared for a while
+from Bohemia, to the regret of but few, and there entered into it one
+Peggy Nutcombe, as pretty a child as ever gladdened the eye of man.  She
+had wavy, flaxen hair, a complexion that might have been manufactured
+from the essence of wild roses, the nose that Tennyson bestows upon his
+miller's daughter, and a mouth worthy of the Lowther Arcade in its days
+of glory.  Add to this the quick grace of a kitten, with the appealing
+helplessness of a baby in its first short frock, and you will be able to
+forgive Mr. Reginald Peters his faithlessness.  Bohemia looked from one
+to the other--from the fairy to the woman--and ceased to blame.  That the
+fairy was as stupid as a camel, as selfish as a pig, and as lazy as a
+nigger Bohemia did not know; nor--so long as her figure and complexion
+remained what it was--would its judgment have been influenced, even if it
+had.  I speak of the Bohemian male.
+
+But that is just what her figure and complexion did not do.  Mr. Reginald
+Peters, finding his uncle old, feeble, and inclined to be fond, deemed it
+to his advantage to stay longer than he had intended.  Twelve months went
+by.  Miss Peggy was losing her kittenish grace, was becoming lumpy.  A
+couple of pimples--one near the right-hand corner of her rosebud mouth,
+and another on the left-hand side of her tip-tilted nose--marred her baby
+face.  At the end of another six months the men called her plump, and the
+women fat.  Her walk was degenerating into a waddle; stairs caused her to
+grunt.  She took to breathing with her mouth, and Bohemia noticed that
+her teeth were small, badly coloured, and uneven.  The pimples grew in
+size and number.  The cream and white of her complexion was merging into
+a general yellow.  A certain greasiness of skin was manifesting itself.
+Babyish ways in connection with a woman who must have weighed about
+eleven stone struck Bohemia as incongruous.  Her manners, judged alone,
+had improved.  But they had not improved her.  They did not belong to
+her; they did not fit her.  They sat on her as Sunday broadcloth on a
+yokel.  She had learned to employ her "h's" correctly, and to speak good
+grammar.  This gave to her conversation a painfully artificial air.  The
+little learning she had absorbed was sufficient to bestow upon her an
+angry consciousness of her own invincible ignorance.
+
+Meanwhile, Miss Ramsbotham had continued upon her course of rejuvenation.
+At twenty-nine she had looked thirty-five; at thirty-two she looked not a
+day older than five-and-twenty.  Bohemia felt that should she retrograde
+further at the same rate she would soon have to shorten her frocks and
+let down her hair.  A nervous excitability had taken possession of her
+that was playing strange freaks not only with her body, but with her
+mind.  What it gave to the one it seemed to take from the other.  Old
+friends, accustomed to enjoy with her the luxury of plain speech,
+wondered in vain what they had done to offend her.  Her desire was now
+towards new friends, new faces.  Her sense of humour appeared to be
+departing from her; it became unsafe to jest with her.  On the other
+hand, she showed herself greedy for admiration and flattery.  Her former
+chums stepped back astonished to watch brainless young fops making their
+way with her by complimenting her upon her blouse, or whispering to her
+some trite nonsense about her eyelashes.  From her work she took a good
+percentage of her brain power to bestow it on her clothes.  Of course,
+she was successful.  Her dresses suited her, showed her to the best
+advantage.  Beautiful she could never be, and had sense enough to know
+it; but a charming, distinguished-looking woman she had already become.
+Also, she was on the high road to becoming a vain, egotistical,
+commonplace woman.
+
+It was during the process of this, her metamorphosis, that Peter Hope one
+evening received a note from her announcing her intention of visiting him
+the next morning at the editorial office of _Good Humour_.  She added in
+a postscript that she would prefer the interview to be private.
+
+Punctually to the time appointed Miss Ramsbotham arrived.  Miss
+Ramsbotham, contrary to her custom, opened conversation with the weather.
+Miss Ramsbotham was of opinion that there was every possibility of rain.
+Peter Hope's experience was that there was always possibility of rain.
+
+"How is the Paper doing?" demanded Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+The Paper--for a paper not yet two years old--was doing well.  "We expect
+very shortly--very shortly indeed," explained Peter Hope, "to turn the
+corner."
+
+"Ah! that 'corner,'" sympathised Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"I confess," smiled Peter Hope, "it doesn't seem to be exactly a right-
+angled corner.  One reaches it as one thinks.  But it takes some getting
+round--what I should describe as a cornery corner."
+
+"What you want," thought Miss Ramsbotham, "are one or two popular
+features."
+
+"Popular features," agreed Peter guardedly, scenting temptation, "are not
+to be despised, provided one steers clear of the vulgar and the
+commonplace."
+
+"A Ladies' Page!" suggested Miss Ramsbotham--"a page that should make the
+woman buy it.  The women, believe me, are going to be of more and more
+importance to the weekly press."
+
+"But why should she want a special page to herself?" demanded Peter Hope.
+"Why should not the paper as a whole appeal to her?"
+
+"It doesn't," was all Miss Ramsbotham could offer in explanation.
+
+"We give her literature and the drama, poetry, fiction, the higher
+politics, the--"
+
+"I know, I know," interrupted Miss Ramsbotham, who of late, among other
+failings new to her, had developed a tendency towards impatience; "but
+she gets all that in half a dozen other papers.  I have thought it out."
+Miss Ramsbotham leaned further across the editorial desk and sunk her
+voice unconsciously to a confidential whisper.  "Tell her the coming
+fashions.  Discuss the question whether hat or bonnet makes you look the
+younger.  Tell her whether red hair or black is to be the new colour,
+what size waist is being worn by the best people.  Oh, come!" laughed
+Miss Ramsbotham in answer to Peter's shocked expression; "one cannot
+reform the world and human nature all at once.  You must appeal to
+people's folly in order to get them to listen to your wisdom.  Make your
+paper a success first.  You can make it a power afterwards."
+
+"But," argued Peter, "there are already such papers--papers devoted to--to
+that sort of thing, and to nothing else."
+
+"At sixpence!" replied the practical Miss Ramsbotham.  "I am thinking of
+the lower middle-class woman who has twenty pounds a year to spend on
+dress, and who takes twelve hours a day to think about it, poor creature.
+My dear friend, there is a fortune in it.  Think of the advertisements."
+
+Poor Peter groaned--old Peter, the dreamer of dreams.  But for thought of
+Tommy! one day to be left alone to battle with a stony-eyed, deaf world,
+Peter most assuredly would have risen in his wrath, would have said to
+his distinguished-looking temptress, "Get thee behind me, Miss
+Ramsbotham.  My journalistic instinct whispers to me that your scheme,
+judged by the mammon of unrighteousness, is good.  It is a new departure.
+Ten years hence half the London journals will have adopted it.  There is
+money in it.  But what of that?  Shall I for mere dross sell my editorial
+soul, turn the temple of the Mighty Pen into a den of--of milliners!  Good
+morning, Miss Ramsbotham.  I grieve for you.  I grieve for you as for a
+fellow-worker once inspired by devotion to a noble calling, who has
+fallen from her high estate.  Good morning, madam."
+
+So Peter thought as he sat tattooing with his finger-tips upon the desk;
+but only said--
+
+"It would have to be well done."
+
+"Everything would depend upon how it was done," agreed Miss Ramsbotham.
+"Badly done, the idea would be wasted.  You would be merely giving it
+away to some other paper."
+
+"Do you know of anyone?" queried Peter.
+
+"I was thinking of myself," answered Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"I am sorry," said Peter Hope.
+
+"Why?" demanded Miss Ramsbotham.  "Don't you think I could do it?"
+
+"I think," said Peter, "no one could do it better.  I am sorry you should
+wish to do it--that is all."
+
+"I want to do it," replied Miss Ramsbotham, a note of doggedness in her
+voice.
+
+"How much do you propose to charge me?" Peter smiled.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"My dear lady--"
+
+"I could not in conscience," explained Miss Ramsbotham, "take payment
+from both sides.  I am going to make a good deal out of it.  I am going
+to make out of it at least three hundred a year, and they will be glad to
+pay it."
+
+"Who will?"
+
+"The dressmakers.  I shall be one of the most stylish women in London,"
+laughed Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"You used to be a sensible woman," Peter reminded her.
+
+"I want to live."
+
+"Can't you manage to do it without--without being a fool, my dear."
+
+"No," answered Miss Ramsbotham, "a woman can't.  I've tried it."
+
+"Very well," agreed Peter, "be it so."
+
+Peter had risen.  He laid his shapely, white old hand upon the woman's
+shoulder.  "Tell me when you want to give it up.  I shall be glad."
+
+Thus it was arranged.  _Good Humour_ gained circulation and--of more
+importance yet--advertisements; and Miss Ramsbotham, as she had
+predicted, the reputation of being one of the best-dressed women in
+London.  Her reason for desiring such reputation Peter Hope had shrewdly
+guessed.  Two months later his suspicions were confirmed.  Mr. Reginald
+Peters, his uncle being dead, was on his way back to England.
+
+His return was awaited with impatience only by the occupants of the
+little flat in the Marylebone Road; and between these two the difference
+of symptom was marked.  Mistress Peggy, too stupid to comprehend the
+change that had been taking place in her, looked forward to her lover's
+arrival with delight.  Mr. Reginald Peters, independently of his
+profession, was in consequence of his uncle's death a man of means.  Miss
+Ramsbotham's tutelage, which had always been distasteful to her, would
+now be at an end.  She would be a "lady" in the true sense of the
+word--according to Miss Peggy's definition, a woman with nothing to do
+but eat and drink, and nothing to think of but dress.  Miss Ramsbotham,
+on the other hand, who might have anticipated the home-coming of her
+quondam admirer with hope, exhibited a strange condition of alarmed
+misery, which increased from day to day as the date drew nearer.
+
+The meeting--whether by design or accident was never known--took place at
+an evening party given by the proprietors of a new journal.  The
+circumstance was certainly unfortunate for poor Peggy, whom Bohemia began
+to pity.  Mr. Peters, knowing both women would be there and so on the
+look-out, saw in the distance among the crowd of notabilities a superbly
+millinered, tall, graceful woman, whose face recalled sensations he could
+not for the moment place.  Chiefly noticeable about her were her
+exquisite neck and arms, and the air of perfect breeding with which she
+moved, talking and laughing, through the distinguished, fashionable
+throng.  Beside her strutted, nervously aggressive, a vulgar, fat,
+pimply, shapeless young woman, attracting universal attention by the
+incongruity of her presence in the room.  On being greeted by the
+graceful lady of the neck and arms, the conviction forced itself upon him
+that this could be no other than the once Miss Ramsbotham, plain of face
+and indifferent of dress, whose very appearance he had almost forgotten.
+On being greeted gushingly as "Reggie" by the sallow-complexioned, over-
+dressed young woman he bowed with evident astonishment, and apologised
+for a memory that, so he assured the lady, had always been to him a
+source of despair.
+
+Of course, he thanked his stars--and Miss Ramsbotham--that the engagement
+had never been formal.  So far as Mr. Peters was concerned, there was an
+end to Mistress Peggy's dream of an existence of everlasting breakfasts
+in bed.  Leaving the Ramsbotham flat, she returned to the maternal roof,
+and there a course of hard work and plain living tended greatly to
+improve her figure and complexion; so that in course of time, the gods
+smiling again upon her, she married a foreman printer, and passes out of
+this story.
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Reginald Peters--older, and the possessor, perhaps, of
+more sense--looked at Miss Ramsbotham with new eyes, and now not
+tolerated but desired her.  Bohemia waited to assist at the happy
+termination of a pretty and somewhat novel romance.  Miss Ramsbotham had
+shown no sign of being attracted elsewhere.  Flattery, compliment, she
+continued to welcome; but merely, so it seemed, as favourable criticism.
+Suitors more fit and proper were now not lacking, for Miss Ramsbotham,
+though a woman less desirable when won, came readily to the thought of
+wooing.  But to all such she turned a laughing face.
+
+"I like her for it," declared Susan Fossett; "and he has improved--there
+was room for it--though I wish it could have been some other.  There was
+Jack Herring--it would have been so much more suitable.  Or even Joe, in
+spite of his size.  But it's her wedding, not ours; and she will never
+care for anyone else."
+
+And Bohemia bought its presents, and had them ready, but never gave them.
+A few months later Mr. Reginald Peters returned to Canada, a bachelor.
+Miss Ramsbotham expressed her desire for another private interview with
+Peter Hope.
+
+"I may as well keep on the Letter to Clorinda," thought Miss Ramsbotham.
+"I have got into the knack of it.  But I will get you to pay me for it in
+the ordinary way."
+
+"I would rather have done so from the beginning," explained Peter.
+
+"I know.  I could not in conscience, as I told you, take from both sides.
+For the future--well, they have said nothing; but I expect they are
+beginning to get tired of it."
+
+"And you!" questioned Peter.
+
+"Yes.  I am tired of it myself," laughed Miss Ramsbotham.  "Life isn't
+long enough to be a well-dressed woman."
+
+"You have done with all that?"
+
+"I hope so," answered Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"And don't want to talk any more about it?" suggested Peter.
+
+"Not just at present.  I should find it so difficult to explain."
+
+By others, less sympathetic than old Peter, vigorous attempts were made
+to solve the mystery.  Miss Ramsbotham took enjoyment in cleverly evading
+these tormentors.  Thwarted at every point, the gossips turned to other
+themes.  Miss Ramsbotham found interest once again in the higher branches
+of her calling; became again, by slow degrees, the sensible, frank, 'good
+sort' that Bohemia had known, liked, respected--everything but loved.
+
+Years later, to Susan Fossett, the case was made clear; and through Susan
+Fossett, a nice enough woman but talkative, those few still interested
+learned the explanation.
+
+"Love," said Miss Ramsbotham to the bosom friend, "is not regulated by
+reason.  As you say, there were many men I might have married with much
+more hope of happiness.  But I never cared for any other man.  He was not
+intellectual, was egotistical, possibly enough selfish.  The man should
+always be older than the woman; he was younger, and he was a weak
+character.  Yet I loved him."
+
+"I am glad you didn't marry him," said the bosom friend.
+
+"So am I," agreed Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"If you can't trust me," had said the bosom friend at this point,
+"don't."
+
+"I meant to do right," said Miss Ramsbotham, "upon my word of honour I
+did, in the beginning."
+
+"I don't understand," said the bosom friend.
+
+"If she had been my own child," continued Miss Ramsbotham, "I could not
+have done more--in the beginning.  I tried to teach her, to put some
+sense into her.  Lord! the hours I wasted on that little idiot!  I marvel
+at my own patience.  She was nothing but an animal.  An animal! she had
+only an animal's vices.  To eat and drink and sleep was her idea of
+happiness; her one ambition male admiration, and she hadn't character
+enough to put sufficient curb upon her stomach to retain it.  I reasoned
+with her, I pleaded with her, I bullied her.  Had I persisted I might
+have succeeded by sheer physical and mental strength in restraining her
+from ruining herself.  I was winning.  I had made her frightened of me.
+Had I gone on, I might have won.  By dragging her out of bed in the
+morning, by insisting upon her taking exercise, by regulating every
+particle of food and drink she put into her mouth, I kept the little
+beast in good condition for nearly three months.  Then, I had to go away
+into the country for a few days; she swore she would obey my
+instructions.  When I came back I found she had been in bed most of the
+time, and had been living chiefly on chocolate and cakes.  She was curled
+up asleep in an easy-chair, snoring with her mouth wide open, when I
+opened the door.  And at sight of that picture the devil came to me and
+tempted me.  Why should I waste my time, wear myself out in mind and
+body, that the man I loved should marry a pig because it looked like an
+angel?  'Six months' wallowing according to its own desires would reveal
+it in its true shape.  So from that day I left it to itself.  No, worse
+than that--I don't want to spare myself--I encouraged her.  I let her
+have a fire in her bedroom, and half her meals in bed.  I let her have
+chocolate with tablespoonfuls of cream floating on the top: she loved it.
+She was never really happy except when eating.  I let her order her own
+meals.  I took a fiendish delight watching the dainty limbs turning to
+shapeless fat, the pink-and-white complexion growing blotchy.  It is
+flesh that man loves; brain and mind and heart and soul! he never thinks
+of them.  This little pink-and-white sow could have cut me out with
+Solomon himself.  Why should such creatures have the world arranged for
+them, and we not be allowed to use our brains in our own defence?  But
+for my looking-glass I might have resisted the temptation, but I always
+had something of the man in me: the sport of the thing appealed to me.  I
+suppose it was the nervous excitement under which I was living that was
+changing me.  All my sap was going into my body.  Given sufficient time,
+I might meet her with her own weapons, animal against animal.  Well, you
+know the result: I won.  There was no doubt about his being in love with
+me.  His eyes would follow me round the room, feasting on me.  I had
+become a fine animal.  Men desired me, Do you know why I refused him?  He
+was in every way a better man than the silly boy I had fallen in love
+with; but he came back with a couple of false teeth: I saw the gold
+setting one day when he opened his mouth to laugh.  I don't say for a
+moment, my dear, there is no such thing as love--love pure, ennobling,
+worthy of men and women, its roots in the heart and nowhere else.  But
+that love I had missed; and the other!  I saw it in its true light.  I
+had fallen in love with him because he was a pretty, curly-headed boy.  He
+had fallen in love with Peggy when she was pink-and-white and slim.  I
+shall always see the look that came into his eyes when she spoke to him
+at the hotel, the look of disgust and loathing.  The girl was the same;
+it was only her body that had grown older.  I could see his eyes fixed
+upon my arms and neck.  I had got to grow old in time, brown skinned, and
+wrinkled.  I thought of him, growing bald, fat--"
+
+"If you had fallen in love with the right man," had said Susan Fossett,
+"those ideas would not have come to you."
+
+"I know," said Miss Ramsbotham.  "He will have to like me thin and in
+these clothes, just because I am nice, and good company, and helpful.
+That is the man I am waiting for."
+
+He never came along.  A charming, bright-eyed, white-haired lady occupies
+alone a little flat in the Marylebone Road, looks in occasionally at the
+Writers' Club.  She is still Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+Bald-headed gentlemen feel young again talking to her: she is so
+sympathetic, so big-minded, so understanding.  Then, hearing the clock
+strike, tear themselves from her with a sigh, and return home--some of
+them--to stupid shrewish wives.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE FIFTH--Joey Loveredge agrees--on certain terms--to join the
+Company
+
+
+The most popular member of the Autolycus Club was undoubtedly Joseph
+Loveredge.  Small, chubby, clean-shaven, his somewhat longish, soft,
+brown hair parted in the middle, strangers fell into the error of
+assuming him to be younger than he really was.  It is on record that a
+leading lady novelist--accepting her at her own estimate--irritated by
+his polite but firm refusal to allow her entrance into his own editorial
+office without appointment, had once boxed his ears, under the impression
+that he was his own office-boy.  Guests to the Autolycus Club, on being
+introduced to him, would give to him kind messages to take home to his
+father, with whom they remembered having been at school together.  This
+sort of thing might have annoyed anyone with less sense of humour.  Joseph
+Loveredge would tell such stories himself, keenly enjoying the jest--was
+even suspected of inventing some of the more improbable.  Another fact
+tending to the popularity of Joseph Loveredge among all classes, over and
+above his amiability, his wit, his genuine kindliness, and his
+never-failing fund of good stories, was that by care and inclination he
+had succeeded in remaining a bachelor.  Many had been the attempts to
+capture him; nor with the passing of the years had interest in the sport
+shown any sign of diminution.  Well over the frailties and distempers so
+dangerous to youth, of staid and sober habits, with an ever-increasing
+capital invested in sound securities, together with an ever-increasing
+income from his pen, with a tastefully furnished house overlooking
+Regent's Park, an excellent and devoted cook and house-keeper, and
+relatives mostly settled in the Colonies, Joseph Loveredge, though
+inexperienced girls might pass him by with a contemptuous sniff, was
+recognised by ladies of maturer judgment as a prize not too often dangled
+before the eyes of spinsterhood.  Old foxes--so we are assured by kind-
+hearted country gentlemen--rather enjoy than otherwise a day with the
+hounds.  However that may be, certain it is that Joseph Loveredge,
+confident of himself, one presumes, showed no particular disinclination
+to the chase.  Perhaps on the whole he preferred the society of his own
+sex, with whom he could laugh and jest with more freedom, to whom he
+could tell his stories as they came to him without the trouble of having
+to turn them over first in his own mind; but, on the other hand, Joey
+made no attempt to avoid female company whenever it came his way; and
+then no cavalier could render himself more agreeable, more unobtrusively
+attentive.  Younger men stood by, in envious admiration of the ease with
+which in five minutes he would establish himself on terms of cosy
+friendship with the brilliant beauty before whose gracious coldness they
+had stood shivering for months; the daring with which he would tuck under
+his arm, so to speak, the prettiest girl in the room, smooth down as if
+by magic her hundred prickles, and tease her out of her overwhelming
+sense of her own self-importance.  The secret of his success was,
+probably, that he was not afraid of them.  Desiring nothing from them
+beyond companionableness, a reasonable amount of appreciation for his
+jokes--which without being exceptionally stupid they would have found it
+difficult to withhold--with just sufficient information and intelligence
+to make conversation interesting, there was nothing about him by which
+they could lay hold of him.  Of course, that rendered them particularly
+anxious to lay hold of him.  Joseph's lady friends might, roughly
+speaking, be divided into two groups: the unmarried, who wanted to marry
+him to themselves; and the married, who wanted to marry him to somebody
+else.  It would be a social disaster, the latter had agreed among
+themselves, if Joseph Loveredge should never wed.
+
+"He would make such an excellent husband for poor Bridget."
+
+"Or Gladys.  I wonder how old Gladys really is?"
+
+"Such a nice, kind little man."
+
+"And when one thinks of the sort of men that _are_ married, it does seem
+such a pity!"
+
+"I wonder why he never has married, because he's just the sort of man
+you'd think _would_ have married."
+
+"I wonder if he ever was in love."
+
+"Oh, my dear, you don't mean to tell me that a man has reached the age of
+forty without ever being in love!"
+
+The ladies would sigh.
+
+"I do hope if ever he does marry, it will be somebody nice.  Men are so
+easily deceived."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised myself a bit if something came of it with
+Bridget.  She's a dear girl, Bridget--so genuine."
+
+"Well, I think myself, dear, if it's anyone, it's Gladys.  I should be so
+glad to see poor dear Gladys settled."
+
+The unmarried kept their thoughts more to themselves.  Each one, upon
+reflection, saw ground for thinking that Joseph Loveredge had given proof
+of feeling preference for herself.  The irritating thing was that, on
+further reflection, it was equally clear that Joseph Loveredge had shown
+signs of preferring most of the others.
+
+Meanwhile Joseph Loveredge went undisturbed upon his way.  At eight
+o'clock in the morning Joseph's housekeeper entered the room with a cup
+of tea and a dry biscuit.  At eight-fifteen Joseph Loveredge arose and
+performed complicated exercises on an indiarubber pulley, warranted, if
+persevered in, to bestow grace upon the figure and elasticity upon the
+limbs.  Joseph Loveredge persevered steadily, and had done so for years,
+and was himself contented with the result, which, seeing it concerned
+nobody else, was all that could be desired.  At half-past eight on
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Joseph Loveredge breakfasted on one cup
+of tea, brewed by himself; one egg, boiled by himself; and two pieces of
+toast, the first one spread with marmalade, the second with butter.  On
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays Joseph Loveredge discarded eggs and
+ate a rasher of bacon.  On Sundays Joseph Loveredge had both eggs and
+bacon, but then allowed himself half an hour longer for reading the
+paper.  At nine-thirty Joseph Loveredge left the house for the office of
+the old-established journal of which he was the incorruptible and
+honoured City editor.  At one-forty-five, having left his office at one-
+thirty, Joseph Loveredge entered the Autolycus Club and sat down to
+lunch.  Everything else in Joseph's life was arranged with similar
+preciseness, so far as was possible with the duties of a City editor.
+Monday evening Joseph spent with musical friends at Brixton.  Friday was
+Joseph's theatre night.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays he was open to receive
+invitations out to dinner; on Wednesdays and Saturdays he invited four
+friends to dine with him at Regent's Park.  On Sundays, whatever the
+season, Joseph Loveredge took an excursion into the country.  He had his
+regular hours for reading, his regular hours for thinking.  Whether in
+Fleet Street, or the Tyrol, on the Thames, or in the Vatican, you might
+recognise him from afar by his grey frock-coat, his patent-leather boots,
+his brown felt hat, his lavender tie.  The man was a born bachelor.  When
+the news of his engagement crept through the smoky portals of the
+Autolycus Club nobody believed it.
+
+"Impossible!" asserted Jack Herring.  "I've known Joey's life for fifteen
+years.  Every five minutes is arranged for.  He could never have found
+the time to do it."
+
+"He doesn't like women, not in that way; I've heard him say so,"
+explained Alexander the Poet.  "His opinion is that women are the artists
+of Society--delightful as entertainers, but troublesome to live with."
+
+"I call to mind," said the Wee Laddie, "a story he told me in this verra
+room, barely three months agone: Some half a dozen of them were gong home
+together from the Devonshire.  They had had a joyous evening, and one of
+them--Joey did not notice which--suggested their dropping in at his place
+just for a final whisky.  They were laughing and talking in the dining-
+room, when their hostess suddenly appeared upon the scene in a costume--so
+Joey described it--the charm of which was its variety.  She was a nice-
+looking woman, Joey said, but talked too much; and when the first lull
+occurred, Joey turned to the man sitting nighest to him, and who looked
+bored, and suggested in a whisper that it was about time they went.
+
+"'Perhaps you had better go,' assented the bored-looking man.  'Wish I
+could come with you; but, you see, I live here.'"
+
+"I don't believe it," said Somerville the Briefless.  "He's been cracking
+his jokes, and some silly woman has taken him seriously."
+
+But the rumour grew into report, developed detail, lost all charm,
+expanded into plain recital of fact.  Joey had not been seen within the
+Club for more than a week--in itself a deadly confirmation.  The question
+became: Who was she--what was she like?
+
+"It's none of our set, or we should have heard something from her side
+before now," argued acutely Somerville the Briefless.
+
+"Some beastly kid who will invite us to dances and forget the supper,"
+feared Johnny Bulstrode, commonly called the Babe.  "Old men always fall
+in love with young girls."
+
+"Forty," explained severely Peter Hope, editor and part proprietor of
+_Good Humour_, "is not old."
+
+"Well, it isn't young," persisted Johnny.
+
+"Good thing for you, Johnny, if it is a girl," thought Jack Herring.
+"Somebody for you to play with.  I often feel sorry for you, having
+nobody but grown-up people to talk to."
+
+"They do get a bit stodgy after a certain age," agreed the Babe.
+
+"I am hoping," said Peter, "it will be some sensible, pleasant woman, a
+little over thirty.  He is a dear fellow, Loveredge; and forty is a very
+good age for a man to marry."
+
+"Well, if I'm not married before I'm forty--" said the Babe.
+
+"Oh, don't you fret," Jack Herring interrupted him--"a pretty boy like
+you!  We will give a ball next season, and bring you out, if you're
+good--get you off our hands in no time."
+
+It was August.  Joey went away for his holiday without again entering the
+Club.  The lady's name was Henrietta Elizabeth Doone.  It was said by the
+_Morning Post_ that she was connected with the Doones of Gloucestershire.
+
+Doones of Gloucestershire--Doones of Gloucestershire mused Miss
+Ramsbotham, Society journalist, who wrote the weekly Letter to Clorinda,
+discussing the matter with Peter Hope in the editorial office of _Good
+Humour_.  "Knew a Doon who kept a big second-hand store in Euston Road
+and called himself an auctioneer.  He bought a small place in
+Gloucestershire and added an 'e' to his name.  Wonder if it's the same?"
+
+"I had a cat called Elizabeth once," said Peter Hope.
+
+"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
+
+"No, of course not," agreed Peter.  "But I was rather fond of it.  It was
+a quaint sort of animal, considered as a cat--would never speak to
+another cat, and hated being out after ten o'clock at night."
+
+"What happened to it?" demanded Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+"Fell off a roof," sighed Peter Hope.  "Wasn't used to them."
+
+The marriage took place abroad, at the English Church at Montreux.  Mr.
+and Mrs. Loveredge returned at the end of September.  The Autolycus Club
+subscribed to send a present of a punch-bowl, left cards, and waited with
+curiosity to see the bride.  But no invitation arrived.  Nor for a month
+was Joey himself seen within the Club.  Then, one foggy afternoon, waking
+after a doze, with a cold cigar in his mouth, Jack Herring noticed he was
+not the only occupant of the smoking-room.  In a far corner, near a
+window, sat Joseph Loveredge reading a magazine.  Jack Herring rubbed his
+eyes, then rose and crossed the room.
+
+"I thought at first," explained Jack Herring, recounting the incident
+later in the evening, "that I must be dreaming.  There he sat, drinking
+his five o'clock whisky-and-soda, the same Joey Loveredge I had known for
+fifteen years; yet not the same.  Not a feature altered, not a hair on
+his head changed, yet the whole face was different; the same body, the
+same clothes, but another man.  We talked for half an hour; he remembered
+everything that Joey Loveredge had known.  I couldn't understand it.
+Then, as the clock struck, and he rose, saying he must be home at half-
+past five, the explanation suddenly occurred to me: _Joey Loveredge was
+dead_; _this was a married man_."
+
+"We don't want your feeble efforts at psychological romance," told him
+Somerville the Briefless.  "We want to know what you talked about.  Dead
+or married, the man who can drink whisky-and-soda must be held
+responsible for his actions.  What's the little beggar mean by cutting us
+all in this way?  Did he ask after any of us?  Did he leave any message
+for any of us?  Did he invite any of us to come an see him?"
+
+"Yes, he did ask after nearly everybody; I was coming to that.  But he
+didn't leave any message.  I didn't gather that he was pining for old
+relationships with any of us."
+
+"Well, I shall go round to the office to-morrow morning," said Somerville
+the Briefless, "and force my way in if necessary.  This is getting
+mysterious."
+
+But Somerville returned only to puzzle the Autolycus Club still further.
+Joey had talked about the weather, the state of political parties, had
+received with unfeigned interest all gossip concerning his old friends;
+but about himself, his wife, nothing had been gleaned.  Mrs. Loveredge
+was well; Mrs. Loveredge's relations were also well.  But at present Mrs.
+Loveredge was not receiving.
+
+Members of the Autolycus Club with time upon their hands took up the
+business of private detectives.  Mrs. Loveredge turned out to be a
+handsome, well-dressed lady of about thirty, as Peter Hope had desired.
+At eleven in the morning, Mrs. Loveredge shopped in the neighbourhood of
+the Hampstead Road.  In the afternoon, Mrs. Loveredge, in a hired
+carriage, would slowly promenade the Park, looking, it was noticed, with
+intense interest at the occupants of other carriages as they passed, but
+evidently having no acquaintances among them.  The carriage, as a general
+rule, would call at Joey's office at five, and Mr. and Mrs. Loveredge
+would drive home.  Jack Herring, as the oldest friend, urged by the other
+members, took the bull by the horns and called boldly.  On neither
+occasion was Mrs. Loveredge at home.
+
+"I'm damned if I go again!" said Jack.  "She was in the second time, I
+know.  I watched her into the house.  Confound the stuck-up pair of
+them!"
+
+Bewilderment gave place to indignation.  Now and again Joey would creep,
+a mental shadow of his former self, into the Club where once every member
+would have risen with a smile to greet him.  They gave him curt answers
+and turned away from him.  Peter Hope one afternoon found him there
+alone, standing with his hands in his pockets looking out of window.
+Peter was fifty, so he said, maybe a little older; men of forty were to
+him mere boys.  So Peter, who hated mysteries, stepped forward with a
+determined air and clapped Joey on the shoulder.
+
+"I want to know, Joey," said Peter, "I want to know whether I am to go on
+liking you, or whether I've got to think poorly of you.  Out with it."
+
+Joey turned to him a face so full of misery that Peter's heart was
+touched.  "You can't tell how wretched it makes me," said Joey.  "I
+didn't know it was possible to feel so uncomfortable as I have felt
+during these last three months."
+
+"It's the wife, I suppose?" suggested Peter.
+
+"She's a dear girl.  She only has one fault."
+
+"It's a pretty big one," returned Peter.  "I should try and break her of
+it if I were you."
+
+"Break her of it!" cried the little man.  "You might as well advise me to
+break a brick wall with my head.  I had no idea what they were like.  I
+never dreamt it."
+
+"But what is her objection to us?  We are clean, we are fairly
+intelligent--"
+
+"My dear Peter, do you think I haven't said all that, and a hundred
+things more?  A woman! she gets an idea into her head, and every argument
+against it hammers it in further.  She has gained her notion of what she
+calls Bohemia from the comic journals.  It's our own fault, we have done
+it ourselves.  There's no persuading her that it's a libel."
+
+"Won't she see a few of us--judge for herself?  There's Porson--why
+Porson might have been a bishop.  Or Somerville--Somerville's Oxford
+accent is wasted here.  It has no chance."
+
+"It isn't only that," explained Joey; "she has ambitions, social
+ambitions.  She thinks that if we begin with the wrong set, we'll never
+get into the right.  We have three friends at present, and, so far as I
+can see, are never likely to have any more.  My dear boy, you'd never
+believe there could exist such bores.  There's a man and his wife named
+Holyoake.  They dine with us on Thursdays, and we dine with them on
+Tuesdays.  Their only title to existence consists in their having a
+cousin in the House of Lords; they claim no other right themselves.  He
+is a widower, getting on for eighty.  Apparently he's the only relative
+they have, and when he dies, they talk of retiring into the country.
+There's a fellow named Cutler, who visited once at Marlborough House in
+connection with a charity.  You'd think to listen to him that he had
+designs upon the throne.  The most tiresome of them all is a noisy woman
+who, as far as I can make out, hasn't any name at all.  'Miss Montgomery'
+is on her cards, but that is only what she calls herself.  Who she really
+is!  It would shake the foundations of European society if known.  We sit
+and talk about the aristocracy; we don't seem to know anybody else.  I
+tried on one occasion a little sarcasm as a corrective--recounted
+conversations between myself and the Prince of Wales, in which I
+invariably addressed him as 'Teddy.'  It sounds tall, I know, but those
+people took it in.  I was too astonished to undeceive them at the time,
+the consequence is I am a sort of little god to them.  They come round me
+and ask for more.  What am I to do?  I am helpless among them.  I've
+never had anything to do before with the really first-prize idiot; the
+usual type, of course, one knows, but these, if you haven't met them, are
+inconceivable.  I try insulting them; they don't even know I am insulting
+them.  Short of dragging them out of their chairs and kicking them round
+the room, I don't see how to make them understand it."
+
+"And Mrs. Loveredge?" asked the sympathetic Peter, "is she--"
+
+"Between ourselves," said Joey, sinking his voice to a needless whisper,
+seeing he and Peter were the sole occupants of the smoking-room--"I
+couldn't, of course, say it to a younger man--but between ourselves, my
+wife is a charming woman.  You don't know her."
+
+"Doesn't seem much chance of my ever doing so," laughed Peter.
+
+"So graceful, so dignified, so--so queenly," continued the little man,
+with rising enthusiasm.  "She has only one fault--she has no sense of
+humour."
+
+To Peter, as it has been said, men of forty were mere boys.
+
+"My dear fellow, whatever could have induced you--"
+
+"I know--I know all that," interrupted the mere boy.  "Nature arranges it
+on purpose.  Tall and solemn prigs marry little women with turned-up
+noses.  Cheerful little fellows like myself--we marry serious, stately
+women.  If it were otherwise, the human race would be split up into
+species."
+
+"Of course, if you were actuated by a sense of public duty--"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Peter Hope," returned the little man.  "I'm in love
+with my wife just as she is, and always shall be.  I know the woman with
+a sense of humour, and of the two I prefer the one without.  The Juno
+type is my ideal.  I must take the rough with the smooth.  One can't have
+a jolly, chirpy Juno, and wouldn't care for her if one could."
+
+"Then are you going to give up all your old friends?"
+
+"Don't suggest it," pleaded the little man.  "You don't know how
+miserable it makes me--the mere idea.  Tell them to be patient.  The
+secret of dealing with women, I have found, is to do nothing rashly."  The
+clock struck five.  "I must go now," said Joey.  "Don't misjudge her,
+Peter, and don't let the others.  She's a dear girl.  You'll like her,
+all of you, when you know her.  A dear girl!  She only has that one
+fault."
+
+Joey went out.
+
+Peter did his best that evening to explain the true position of affairs
+without imputing snobbery to Mrs. Loveredge.  It was a difficult task,
+and Peter cannot be said to have accomplished it successfully.  Anger and
+indignation against Joey gave place to pity.  The members of the
+Autolycus Club also experienced a little irritation on their own account.
+
+"What does the woman take us for?" demanded Somerville the Briefless.
+"Doesn't she know that we lunch with real actors and actresses, that once
+a year we are invited to dine at the Mansion House?"
+
+"Has she never heard of the aristocracy of genius?" demanded Alexander
+the Poet.
+
+"The explanation may be that possibly she has seen it," feared the Wee
+Laddie.
+
+"One of us ought to waylay the woman," argued the Babe--"insist upon her
+talking to him for ten minutes.  I've half a mind to do it myself."
+
+Jack Herring said nothing--seemed thoughtful.
+
+The next morning Jack Herring, still thoughtful, called at the editorial
+offices of _Good Humour_, in Crane Court, and borrowed Miss Ramsbotham's
+Debrett.  Three days later Jack Herring informed the Club casually that
+he had dined the night before with Mr. and Mrs. Loveredge.  The Club gave
+Jack Herring politely to understand that they regarded him as a liar, and
+proceeded to demand particulars.
+
+"If I wasn't there," explained Jack Herring, with unanswerable logic,
+"how can I tell you anything about it?"
+
+This annoyed the Club, whose curiosity had been whetted.  Three members,
+acting in the interests of the whole, solemnly undertook to believe
+whatever he might tell them.  But Jack Herring's feelings had been
+wounded.
+
+"When gentlemen cast a doubt upon another gentleman's veracity--"
+
+"We didn't cast a doubt," explained Somerville the Briefless.  "We merely
+said that we personally did not believe you.  We didn't say we couldn't
+believe you; it is a case for individual effort.  If you give us
+particulars bearing the impress of reality, supported by details that do
+not unduly contradict each other, we are prepared to put aside our
+natural suspicions and face the possibility of your statement being
+correct."
+
+"It was foolish of me," said Jack Herring.  "I thought perhaps it would
+amuse you to hear what sort of a woman Mrs. Loveredge was like--some
+description of Mrs. Loveredge's uncle.  Miss Montgomery, friend of Mrs.
+Loveredge, is certainly one of the most remarkable women I have ever met.
+Of course, that isn't her real name.  But, as I have said, it was foolish
+of me.  These people--you will never meet them, you will never see them;
+of what interest can they be to you?"
+
+"They had forgotten to draw down the blinds, and he climbed up a lamp-
+post and looked through the window," was the solution of the problem put
+forward by the Wee Laddie.
+
+"I'm dining there again on Saturday," volunteered Jack Herring.  "If any
+of you will promise not to make a disturbance, you can hang about on the
+Park side, underneath the shadow of the fence, and watch me go in.  My
+hansom will draw up at the door within a few minutes of eight."
+
+The Babe and the Poet agreed to undertake the test.
+
+"You won't mind our hanging round a little while, in case you're thrown
+out again?" asked the Babe.
+
+"Not in the least, so far as I am concerned," replied Jack Herring.
+"Don't leave it too late and make your mother anxious."
+
+"It's true enough," the Babe recounted afterwards.  "The door was opened
+by a manservant and he went straight in.  We walked up and down for half
+an hour, and unless they put him out the back way, he's telling the
+truth."
+
+"Did you hear him give his name?" asked Somerville, who was stroking his
+moustache.
+
+"No, we were too far off," explained the Babe.  "But--I'll swear it was
+Jack--there couldn't be any mistake about that."
+
+"Perhaps not," agreed Somerville the Briefless.
+
+Somerville the Briefless called at the offices of _Good Humour_, in Crane
+Court, the following morning, and he also borrowed Miss Ramsbotham's
+Debrett.
+
+"What's the meaning of it?" demanded the sub-editor.
+
+"Meaning of what?"
+
+"This sudden interest of all you fellows in the British Peerage."
+
+"All of us?"
+
+"Well, Herring was here last week, poring over that book for half an
+hour, with the _Morning Post_ spread out before him.  Now you're doing
+the same thing."
+
+"Ah!  Jack Herring, was he?  I thought as much.  Don't talk about it,
+Tommy.  I'll tell you later on."
+
+On the following Monday, the Briefless one announced to the Club that he
+had received an invitation to dine at the Loveredges' on the following
+Wednesday.  On Tuesday, the Briefless one entered the Club with a slow
+and stately step.  Halting opposite old Goslin the porter, who had
+emerged from his box with the idea of discussing the Oxford and Cambridge
+boat race, Somerville, removing his hat with a sweep of the arm, held it
+out in silence.  Old Goslin, much astonished, took it mechanically,
+whereupon the Briefless one, shaking himself free from his Inverness
+cape, flung it lightly after the hat, and strolled on, not noticing that
+old Goslin, unaccustomed to coats lightly and elegantly thrown at him,
+dropping the hat, had caught it on his head, and had been, in the
+language of the prompt-book, "left struggling."  The Briefless one,
+entering the smoking-room, lifted a chair and let it fall again with a
+crash, and sitting down upon it, crossed his legs and rang the bell.
+
+"Ye're doing it verra weel," remarked approvingly the Wee Laddie.  "Ye're
+just fitted for it by nature."
+
+"Fitted for what?" demanded the Briefless one, waking up apparently from
+a dream.
+
+"For an Adelphi guest at eighteenpence the night," assured him the Wee
+Laddie.  "Ye're just splendid at it."
+
+The Briefless one, muttering that the worst of mixing with journalists
+was that if you did not watch yourself, you fell into their ways, drank
+his whisky in silence.  Later, the Babe swore on a copy of _Sell's
+Advertising Guide_ that, crossing the Park, he had seen the Briefless one
+leaning over the railings of Rotten Row, clad in a pair of new kid
+gloves, swinging a silver-headed cane.
+
+One morning towards the end of the week, Joseph Loveredge, looking twenty
+years younger than when Peter had last seen him, dropped in at the
+editorial office of _Good Humour_ and demanded of Peter Hope how he felt
+and what he thought of the present price of Emma Mines.
+
+Peter Hope's fear was that the gambling fever was spreading to all
+classes of society.
+
+"I want you to dine with us on Sunday," said Joseph Loveredge.  "Jack
+Herring will be there.  You might bring Tommy with you."
+
+Peter Hope gulped down his astonishment and said he should be delighted;
+he thought that Tommy also was disengaged.  "Mrs. Loveredge out of town,
+I presume?" questioned Peter Hope.
+
+"On the contrary," replied Joseph Loveredge, "I want you to meet her."
+
+Joseph Loveredge removed a pile of books from one chair and placed them
+carefully upon another, after which he went and stood before the fire.
+
+"Don't if you don't like," said Joseph Loveredge; "but if you don't mind,
+you might call yourself, just for the evening--say, the Duke of
+Warrington."
+
+"Say the what?" demanded Peter Hope.
+
+"The Duke of Warrington," repeated Joey.  "We are rather short of dukes.
+Tommy can be the Lady Adelaide, your daughter."
+
+"Don't be an ass!" said Peter Hope.
+
+"I'm not an ass," assured him Joseph Loveredge.  "He is wintering in
+Egypt.  You have run back for a week to attend to business.  There is no
+Lady Adelaide, so that's quite simple."
+
+"But what in the name of--" began Peter Hope.
+
+"Don't you see what I'm driving at?" persisted Joey.  "It was Jack's idea
+at the beginning.  I was frightened myself at first, but it is working to
+perfection.  She sees you, and sees that you are a gentleman.  When the
+truth comes out--as, of course, it must later on--the laugh will be
+against her."
+
+"You think--you think that'll comfort her?" suggested Peter Hope.
+
+"It's the only way, and it is really wonderfully simple.  We never
+mention the aristocracy now--it would be like talking shop.  We just
+enjoy ourselves.  You, by the way, I met in connection with the movement
+for rational dress.  You are a bit of a crank, fond of frequenting
+Bohemian circles."
+
+"I am risking something, I know," continued Joey; "but it's worth it.  I
+couldn't have existed much longer.  We go slowly, and are very careful.
+Jack is Lord Mount-Primrose, who has taken up with anti-vaccination and
+who never goes out into Society.  Somerville is Sir Francis Baldwin, the
+great authority on centipedes.  The Wee Laddie is coming next week as
+Lord Garrick, who married that dancing-girl, Prissy Something, and
+started a furniture shop in Bond Street.  I had some difficulty at first.
+She wanted to send out paragraphs, but I explained that was only done by
+vulgar persons--that when the nobility came to you as friends, it was
+considered bad taste.  She is a dear girl, as I have always told you,
+with only one fault.  A woman easier to deceive one could not wish for.  I
+don't myself see why the truth ever need come out--provided we keep our
+heads."
+
+"Seems to me you've lost them already," commented Peter; "you're
+overdoing it."
+
+"The more of us the better," explained Joey; "we help each other.
+Besides, I particularly want you in it.  There's a sort of superior
+Pickwickian atmosphere surrounding you that disarms suspicion."
+
+"You leave me out of it," growled Peter.
+
+"See here," laughed Joey; "you come as the Duke of Warrington, and bring
+Tommy with you, and I'll write your City article."
+
+"For how long?" snapped Peter.  Incorruptible City editors are not easily
+picked up.
+
+"Oh, well, for as long as you like."
+
+"On that understanding," agreed Peter, "I'm willing to make a fool of
+myself in your company."
+
+"You'll soon get used to it," Joey told him; "eight o'clock, then, on
+Sunday; plain evening dress.  If you like to wear a bit of red ribbon in
+your buttonhole, why, do so.  You can get it at Evans', in Covent
+Garden."
+
+"And Tommy is the Lady--"
+
+"Adelaide.  Let her have a taste for literature, then she needn't wear
+gloves.  I know she hates them."  Joey turned to go.
+
+"Am I married?" asked Peter.
+
+Joey paused.  "I should avoid all reference to your matrimonial affairs
+if I were you," was Joey's advice.  "You didn't come out of that business
+too well."
+
+"Oh! as bad as that, was I?  You don't think Mrs. Loveredge will object
+to me?"
+
+"I have asked her that.  She's a dear, broad-minded girl.  I've promised
+not to leave you alone with Miss Montgomery, and Willis has had
+instructions not to let you mix your drinks."
+
+"I'd have liked to have been someone a trifle more respectable," grumbled
+Peter.
+
+"We rather wanted a duke," explained Joey, "and he was the only one that
+fitted in all round."
+
+The dinner a was a complete success.  Tommy, entering into the spirit of
+the thing, bought a new pair of open-work stockings and assumed a languid
+drawl.  Peter, who was growing forgetful, introduced her as the Lady
+Alexandra; it did not seem to matter, both beginning with an A.  She
+greeted Lord Mount-Primrose as "Billy," and asked affectionately after
+his mother.  Joey told his raciest stories.  The Duke of Warrington
+called everybody by their Christian names, and seemed well acquainted
+with Bohemian society--a more amiable nobleman it would have been
+impossible to discover.  The lady whose real name was not Miss Montgomery
+sat in speechless admiration.  The hostess was the personification of
+gracious devotion.
+
+Other little dinners, equally successful, followed.  Joey's
+acquaintanceship appeared to be confined exclusively to the higher
+circles of the British aristocracy--with one exception: that of a German
+baron, a short, stout gentleman, who talked English well, but with an
+accent, and who, when he desired to be impressive, laid his right
+forefinger on the right side of his nose and thrust his whole face
+forward.  Mrs. Loveredge wondered why her husband had not introduced them
+sooner, but was too blissful to be suspicious.  The Autolycus Club was
+gradually changing its tone.  Friends could no longer recognise one
+another by the voice.  Every corner had its solitary student practising
+high-class intonation.  Members dropped into the habit of addressing one
+another as "dear chappie," and, discarding pipes, took to cheap cigars.
+Many of the older _habitues_ resigned.
+
+All might have gone well to the end of time if only Mrs. Loveredge had
+left all social arrangements in the hands of her husband--had not sought
+to aid his efforts.  To a certain political garden-party, one day in the
+height of the season, were invited Joseph Loveredge and Mrs. Joseph
+Loveredge, his wife.  Mr. Joseph Loveredge at the last moment found
+himself unable to attend.  Mrs. Joseph Loveredge went alone, met there
+various members of the British aristocracy.  Mrs. Joseph Loveredge,
+accustomed to friendship with the aristocracy, felt at her ease and was
+natural and agreeable.  The wife of an eminent peer talked to her and
+liked her.  It occurred to Mrs. Joseph Loveredge that this lady might be
+induced to visit her house in Regent's Park, there to mingle with those
+of her own class.
+
+"Lord Mount-Primrose, the Duke of Warrington, and a few others will be
+dining with us on Sunday next," suggested Mrs. Loveredge.  "Will not you
+do us the honour of coming?  We are, of course, only simple folk
+ourselves, but somehow people seem to like us."
+
+The wife of the eminent peer looked at Mrs. Loveredge, looked round the
+grounds, looked at Mrs. Loveredge again, and said she would like to come.
+Mrs. Joseph Loveredge intended at first to tell her husband of her
+success, but a little devil entering into her head and whispering to her
+that it would be amusing, she resolved to keep it as a surprise, to be
+sprung upon him at eight o'clock on Sunday.  The surprise proved all she
+could have hoped for.
+
+The Duke of Warrington, having journalistic matters to discuss with
+Joseph Loveredge, arrived at half-past seven, wearing on his shirt-front
+a silver star, purchased in Eagle Street the day before for eight-and-
+six.  There accompanied him the Lady Alexandra, wearing the identical
+ruby necklace that every night for the past six months, and twice on
+Saturdays, "John Strongheart" had been falsely accused of stealing.  Lord
+Garrick, having picked up his wife (Miss Ramsbotham) outside the Mother
+Redcap, arrived with her on foot at a quarter to eight.  Lord
+Mount-Primrose, together with Sir Francis Baldwin, dashed up in a hansom
+at seven-fifty.  His Lordship, having lost the toss, paid the fare.  The
+Hon. Harry Sykes (commonly called "the Babe") was ushered in five minutes
+later.  The noble company assembled in the drawing-room chatted blithely
+while waiting for dinner to be announced.  The Duke of Warrington was
+telling an anecdote about a cat, which nobody appeared to believe.  Lord
+Mount-Primrose desired to know whether by any chance it might be the same
+animal that every night at half-past nine had been in the habit of
+climbing up his Grace's railings and knocking at his Grace's door.  The
+Honourable Harry was saying that, speaking of cats, he once had a sort of
+terrier--when the door was thrown open and Willis announced the Lady Mary
+Sutton.
+
+Mr. Joseph Loveredge, who was sitting near the fire, rose up.  Lord Mount-
+Primrose, who was standing near the piano, sat down.  The Lady Mary
+Sutton paused in the doorway.  Mrs. Loveredge crossed the room to greet
+her.
+
+"Let me introduce you to my husband," said Mrs. Loveredge.  "Joey, my
+dear, the Lady Mary Sutton.  I met the Lady Mary at the O'Meyers' the
+other day, and she was good enough to accept my invitation.  I forgot to
+tell you."
+
+Mr. Loveredge said he was delighted; after which, although as a rule a
+chatty man, he seemed to have nothing else to say.  And a silence fell.
+
+Somerville the Briefless--till then.  That evening has always been
+reckoned the starting-point of his career.  Up till then nobody thought
+he had much in him--walked up and held out his hand.
+
+"You don't remember me, Lady Mary," said the Briefless one.  "I met you
+some years ago; we had a most interesting conversation--Sir Francis
+Baldwin."
+
+The Lady Mary stood for a moment trying apparently to recollect.  She was
+a handsome, fresh-complexioned woman of about forty, with frank,
+agreeable eyes.  The Lady Mary glanced at Lord Garrick, who was talking
+rapidly to Lord Mount-Primrose, who was not listening, and who could not
+have understood even if he had been, Lord Garrick, without being aware of
+it, having dropped into broad Scotch.  From him the Lady Mary glanced at
+her hostess, and from her hostess to her host.
+
+The Lady Mary took the hand held out to her.  "Of course," said the Lady
+Mary; "how stupid of me!  It was the day of my own wedding, too.  You
+really must forgive me.  We talked of quite a lot of things.  I remember
+now."
+
+Mrs. Loveredge, who prided herself upon maintaining old-fashioned
+courtesies, proceeded to introduce the Lady Mary to her fellow-guests, a
+little surprised that her ladyship appeared to know so few of them.  Her
+ladyship's greeting of the Duke of Warrington was accompanied, it was
+remarked, by a somewhat curious smile.  To the Duke of Warrington's
+daughter alone did the Lady Mary address remark.
+
+"My dear," said the Lady Mary, "how you have grown since last we met!"
+
+The announcement of dinner, as everybody felt, came none too soon.
+
+It was not a merry feast.  Joey told but one story; he told it three
+times, and twice left out the point.  Lord Mount-Primrose took sifted
+sugar with _pate de foie gras_ and ate it with a spoon.  Lord Garrick,
+talking a mixture of Scotch and English, urged his wife to give up
+housekeeping and take a flat in Gower Street, which, as he pointed out,
+was central.  She could have her meals sent in to her and so avoid all
+trouble.  The Lady Alexandra's behaviour appeared to Mrs. Loveredge not
+altogether well-bred.  An eccentric young noblewoman Mrs. Loveredge had
+always found her, but wished on this occasion that she had been a little
+less eccentric.  Every few minutes the Lady Alexandra buried her face in
+her serviette, and shook and rocked, emitting stifled sounds, apparently
+those of acute physical pain.  Mrs. Loveredge hoped she was not feeling
+ill, but the Lady Alexandra appeared incapable of coherent reply.  Twice
+during the meal the Duke of Warrington rose from the table and began
+wandering round the room; on each occasion, asked what he wanted, had
+replied meekly that he was merely looking for his snuff-box, and had sat
+down again.  The only person who seemed to enjoy the dinner was the Lady
+Mary Sutton.
+
+The ladies retired upstairs into the drawing-room.  Mrs. Loveredge,
+breaking a long silence, remarked it as unusual that no sound of
+merriment reached them from the dining-room.  The explanation was that
+the entire male portion of the party, on being left to themselves, had
+immediately and in a body crept on tiptoe into Joey's study, which,
+fortunately, happened to be on the ground floor.  Joey, unlocking the
+bookcase, had taken out his Debrett, but appeared incapable of
+understanding it.  Sir Francis Baldwin had taken it from his unresisting
+hands; the remaining aristocracy huddled themselves into a corner and
+waited in silence.
+
+"I think I've got it all clearly," announced Sir Francis Baldwin, after
+five minutes, which to the others had been an hour.  "Yes, I don't think
+I'm making any mistake.  She's the daughter of the Duke of Truro, married
+in '53 the Duke of Warrington, at St. Peter's, Eaton Square; gave birth
+in '55 to a daughter, the Lady Grace Alexandra Warberton Sutton, which
+makes the child just thirteen.  In '63 divorced the Duke of Warrington.
+Lord Mount-Primrose, so far as I can make out, must be her second cousin.
+I appear to have married her in '66 at Hastings.  It doesn't seem to me
+that we could have got together a homelier little party to meet her even
+if we had wanted to."
+
+Nobody spoke; nobody had anything particularly worth saying.  The door
+opened, and the Lady Alexandra (otherwise Tommy) entered the room.
+
+"Isn't it time," suggested the Lady Alexandra, "that some of you came
+upstairs?"
+
+"I was thinking myself," explained Joey, the host, with a grim smile, "it
+was about time that I went out and drowned myself.  The canal is handy."
+
+"Put it off till to-morrow," Tommy advised him.  "I have asked her
+ladyship to give me a lift home, and she has promised to do so.  She is
+evidently a woman with a sense of humour.  Wait till after I have had a
+talk with her."
+
+Six men, whispering at the same time, were prepared with advice; but
+Tommy was not taking advice.
+
+"Come upstairs, all of you," insisted Tommy, "and make yourselves
+agreeable.  She's going in a quarter of an hour."
+
+Six silent men, the host leading, the two husbands bringing up the rear,
+ascended the stairs, each with the sensation of being twice his usual
+weight.  Six silent men entered the drawing-room and sat down on chairs.
+Six silent men tried to think of something interesting to say.
+
+Miss Ramsbotham--it was that or hysterics, as she afterwards
+explained--stifling a sob, opened the piano.  But the only thing she
+could remember was "Champagne Charlie is my Name," a song then popular in
+the halls.  Five men, when she had finished, begged her to go on.  Miss
+Ramsbotham, speaking in a shrill falsetto, explained it was the only tune
+she knew.  Four of them begged her to play it again.  Miss Ramsbotham
+played it a second time with involuntary variations.
+
+The Lady Mary's carriage was announced by the imperturbable Willis.  The
+party, with the exception of the Lady Mary and the hostess, suppressed
+with difficulty an inclination to burst into a cheer.  The Lady Mary
+thanked Mrs. Loveredge for a most interesting evening, and beckoned Tommy
+to accompany her.  With her disappearance, a wild hilarity, uncanny in
+its suddenness, took possession of the remaining guests.
+
+A few days later, the Lady Mary's carriage again drew up before the
+little house in Regent's Park.  Mrs. Loveredge, fortunately, was at home.
+The carriage remained waiting for quite a long time.  Mrs. Loveredge,
+after it was gone, locked herself in her own room.  The under-housemaid
+reported to the kitchen that, passing the door, she had detected sounds
+indicative of strong emotion.
+
+Through what ordeal Joseph Loveredge passed was never known.  For a few
+weeks the Autolycus Club missed him.  Then gradually, as aided by Time
+they have a habit of doing, things righted themselves.  Joseph Loveredge
+received his old friends; his friends received Joseph Loveredge.  Mrs.
+Loveredge, as a hostess, came to have only one failing--a marked coldness
+of demeanour towards all people with titles, whenever introduced to her.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE SIXTH--"The Babe" applies for Shares
+
+
+People said of the new journal, _Good Humour_--people of taste and
+judgment, that it was the brightest, the cleverest, the most literary
+penny weekly that ever had been offered to the public.  This made Peter
+Hope, editor and part-proprietor, very happy.  William Clodd, business
+manager, and also part-proprietor, it left less elated.
+
+"Must be careful," said William Clodd, "that we don't make it too clever.
+Happy medium, that's the ideal."
+
+People said--people of taste and judgment, that _Good Humour_ was more
+worthy of support than all the other penny weeklies put together.  People
+of taste and judgment even went so far, some of them, as to buy it.  Peter
+Hope, looking forward, saw fame and fortune coming to him.
+
+William Clodd, looking round about him, said--
+
+"Doesn't it occur to you, Guv'nor, that we're getting this thing just a
+trifle too high class?"
+
+"What makes you think that?" demanded Peter Hope.
+
+"Our circulation, for one thing," explained Clodd.  "The returns for last
+month--"
+
+"I'd rather you didn't mention them, if you don't mind," interrupted
+Peter Hope; "somehow, hearing the actual figures always depresses me."
+
+"Can't say I feel inspired by them myself," admitted Clodd.
+
+"It will come," said Peter Hope, "it will come in time.  We must educate
+the public up to our level."
+
+"If there is one thing, so far as I have noticed," said William Clodd,
+"that the public are inclined to pay less for than another, it is for
+being educated."
+
+"What are we to do?" asked Peter Hope.
+
+"What you want," answered William Clodd, "is an office-boy."
+
+"How will our having an office-boy increase our circulation?" demanded
+Peter Hope.  "Besides, it was agreed that we could do without one for the
+first year.  Why suggest more expense?"
+
+"I don't mean an ordinary office-boy," explained Clodd.  "I mean the sort
+of boy that I rode with in the train going down to Stratford yesterday."
+
+"What was there remarkable about him?"
+
+"Nothing.  He was reading the current number of the _Penny Novelist_.
+Over two hundred thousand people buy it.  He is one of them.  He told me
+so.  When he had done with it, he drew from his pocket a copy of the
+_Halfpenny Joker_--they guarantee a circulation of seventy thousand.  He
+sat and chuckled over it until we got to Bow."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You wait a minute.  I'm coming to the explanation.  That boy represents
+the reading public.  I talked to him.  The papers he likes best are the
+papers that have the largest sales.  He never made a single mistake.  The
+others--those of them he had seen--he dismissed as 'rot.'  What he likes
+is what the great mass of the journal-buying public likes.  Please him--I
+took his name and address, and he is willing to come to us for eight
+shillings a week--and you please the people that buy.  Not the people
+that glance through a paper when it is lying on the smoking-room table,
+and tell you it is damned good, but the people that plank down their
+penny.  That's the sort we want."
+
+Peter Hope, able editor, with ideals, was shocked--indignant.  William
+Clodd, business man, without ideals, talked figures.
+
+"There's the advertiser to be thought of," persisted Clodd.  "I don't
+pretend to be a George Washington, but what's the use of telling lies
+that sound like lies, even to one's self while one's telling them?  Give
+me a genuine sale of twenty thousand, and I'll undertake, without
+committing myself, to convey an impression of forty.  But when the actual
+figures are under eight thousand--well, it hampers you, if you happen to
+have a conscience.
+
+"Give them every week a dozen columns of good, sound literature,"
+continued Clodd insinuatingly, "but wrap it up in twenty-four columns of
+jam.  It's the only way they'll take it, and you will be doing them
+good--educating them without their knowing it.  All powder and no jam!
+Well, they don't open their mouths, that's all."
+
+Clodd was a man who knew how to get his way.  Flipp--spelled
+Philip--Tweetel arrived in due course of time at 23, Crane Court,
+ostensibly to take up the position of _Good Humour's_ office-boy; in
+reality, and without his being aware of it, to act as its literary
+taster.  Stories in which Flipp became absorbed were accepted.  Peter
+groaned, but contented himself with correcting only their grosser
+grammatical blunders; the experiment should be tried in all good faith.
+Humour at which Flipp laughed was printed.  Peter tried to ease his
+conscience by increasing his subscription to the fund for destitute
+compositors, but only partially succeeded.  Poetry that brought a tear to
+the eye of Flipp was given leaded type.  People of taste and judgment
+said _Good Humour_ had disappointed them.  Its circulation, slowly but
+steadily, increased.
+
+"See!" cried the delighted Clodd; "told you so!"
+
+"It's sad to think--" began Peter.
+
+"Always is," interrupted Clodd cheerfully.  "Moral--don't think too
+much."
+
+"Tell you what we'll do," added Clodd.  "We'll make a fortune out of this
+paper.  Then when we can afford to lose a little money, we'll launch a
+paper that shall appeal only to the intellectual portion of the public.
+Meanwhile--"
+
+A squat black bottle with a label attached, standing on the desk,
+arrested Clodd's attention.
+
+"When did this come?" asked Clodd.
+
+"About an hour ago," Peter told him.
+
+"Any order with it?"
+
+"I think so."  Peter searched for and found a letter addressed to
+"William Clodd, Esq., Advertising Manager, _Good Humour_."  Clodd tore it
+open, hastily devoured it.
+
+"Not closed up yet, are you?"
+
+"No, not till eight o'clock."
+
+"Good!  I want you to write me a par.  Do it now, then you won't forget
+it.  For the 'Walnuts and Wine' column."
+
+Peter sat down, headed a sheet of paper: 'For W. and W. Col.'
+
+"What is it?" questioned Peter--"something to drink?"
+
+"It's a sort of port," explained Clodd, "that doesn't get into your
+head."
+
+"You consider that an advantage?" queried Peter.
+
+"Of course.  You can drink more of it."
+
+Peter continued to write: 'Possesses all the qualities of an old vintage
+port, without those deleterious properties--'  "I haven't tasted it,
+Clodd," hinted Peter.
+
+"That's all right--I have."
+
+"And was it good?"
+
+"Splendid stuff.  Say it's 'delicious and invigorating.'  They'll be sure
+to quote that."
+
+Peter wrote on: 'Personally I have found it delicious and--' Peter left
+off writing.  "I really think, Clodd, I ought to taste it.  You see, I am
+personally recommending it."
+
+"Finish that par.  Let me have it to take round to the printers.  Then
+put the bottle in your pocket.  Take it home and make a night of it."
+
+Clodd appeared to be in a mighty hurry.  Now, this made Peter only the
+more suspicious.  The bottle was close to his hand.  Clodd tried to
+intercept him, but was not quick enough.
+
+"You're not used to temperance drinks," urged Clodd.  "Your palate is not
+accustomed to them."
+
+"I can tell whether it's 'delicious' or not, surely?" pleaded Peter, who
+had pulled out the cork.
+
+"It's a quarter-page advertisement for thirteen weeks.  Put it down and
+don't be a fool!" urged Clodd.
+
+"I'm going to put it down," laughed Peter, who was fond of his joke.
+Peter poured out half a tumblerful, and drank--some of it.
+
+"Like it?" demanded Clodd, with a savage grin.
+
+"You are sure--you are sure it was the right bottle?" gasped Peter.
+
+"Bottle's all right," Clodd assured him.  "Try some more.  Judge it
+fairly."
+
+Peter ventured on another sip.  "You don't think they would be satisfied
+if I recommended it as a medicine?" insinuated Peter--"something to have
+about the house in case of accidental poisoning?"
+
+"Better go round and suggest the idea to them yourself.  I've done with
+it."  Clodd took up his hat.
+
+"I'm sorry--I'm very sorry," sighed Peter.  "But I couldn't
+conscientiously--"
+
+Clodd put down his hat again with a bang.  "Oh! confound that conscience
+of yours!  Don't it ever think of your creditors?  What's the use of my
+working out my lungs for you, when all you do is to hamper me at every
+step?"
+
+"Wouldn't it be better policy," urged Peter, "to go for the better class
+of advertiser, who doesn't ask you for this sort of thing?"
+
+"Go for him!" snorted Clodd.  "Do you think I don't go for him?  They are
+just sheep.  Get one, you get the lot.  Until you've got the one, the
+others won't listen to you."
+
+"That's true," mused Peter.  "I spoke to Wilkinson, of Kingsley's,
+myself.  He advised me to try and get Landor's.  He thought that if I
+could get an advertisement out of Landor, he might persuade his people to
+give us theirs."
+
+"And if you had gone to Landor, he would have promised you theirs
+provided you got Kingsley's."
+
+"They will come," thought hopeful Peter.  "We are going up steadily.  They
+will come with a rush."
+
+"They had better come soon," thought Clodd.  "The only things coming with
+a rush just now are bills."
+
+"Those articles of young McTear's attracted a good deal of attention,"
+expounded Peter.  "He has promised to write me another series."
+
+"Jowett is the one to get hold of," mused Clodd.  "Jowett, all the others
+follow like a flock of geese waddling after the old gander.  If only we
+could get hold of Jowett, the rest would be easy."
+
+Jowett was the proprietor of the famous Marble Soap.  Jowett spent on
+advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said.  Jowett was
+the stay and prop of periodical literature.  New papers that secured the
+Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it
+was denied languished and died.  Jowett, and how to get hold of him;
+Jowett, and how to get round him, formed the chief topic of discussion at
+the council-board of most new papers, _Good Humour_ amongst the number.
+
+"I have heard," said Miss Ramsbotham, who wrote the Letter to Clorinda
+that filled each week the last two pages of _Good Humour_, and that told
+Clorinda, who lived secluded in the country, the daily history of the
+highest class society, among whom Miss Ramsbotham appeared to live and
+have her being; who they were, and what they wore, the wise and otherwise
+things they did--"I have heard," said Miss Ramsbotham one morning, Jowett
+being as usual the subject under debate, "that the old man is susceptible
+to female influence."
+
+"What I have always thought," said Clodd.  "A lady advertising-agent
+might do well.  At all events, they couldn't kick her out."
+
+"They might in the end," thought Peter.  "Female door-porters would
+become a profession for muscular ladies if ever the idea took root."
+
+"The first one would get a good start, anyhow," thought Clodd.
+
+The sub-editor had pricked up her ears.  Once upon a time, long ago, the
+sub-editor had succeeded, when all other London journalists had failed,
+in securing an interview with a certain great statesman.  The sub-editor
+had never forgotten this--nor allowed anyone else to forget it.
+
+"I believe I could get it for you," said the sub-editor.
+
+The editor and the business-manager both spoke together.  They spoke with
+decision and with emphasis.
+
+"Why not?" said the sub-editor.  "When nobody else could get at him, it
+was I who interviewed Prince--"
+
+"We've heard all about that," interrupted the business-manager.  "If I
+had been your father at the time, you would never have done it."
+
+"How could I have stopped her?" retorted Peter Hope.  "She never said a
+word to me."
+
+"You could have kept an eye on her."
+
+"Kept an eye on her!  When you've got a girl of your own, you'll know
+more about them."
+
+"When I have," asserted Clodd, "I'll manage her."
+
+"We know all about bachelor's children," sneered Peter Hope, the editor.
+
+"You leave it to me.  I'll have it for you before the end of the week,"
+crowed the sub-editor.
+
+"If you do get it," returned Clodd, "I shall throw it out, that's all."
+
+"You said yourself a lady advertising-agent would be a good idea," the
+sub-editor reminded him.
+
+"So she might be," returned Clodd; "but she isn't going to be you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because she isn't, that's why."
+
+"But if--"
+
+"See you at the printer's at twelve," said Clodd to Peter, and went out
+suddenly.
+
+"Well, I think he's an idiot," said the sub-editor.
+
+"I do not often," said the editor, "but on this point I agree with him.
+Cadging for advertisements isn't a woman's work."
+
+"But what is the difference between--"
+
+"All the difference in the world," thought the editor.
+
+"You don't know what I was going to say," returned his sub.
+
+"I know the drift of it," asserted the editor.
+
+"But you let me--"
+
+"I know I do--a good deal too much.  I'm going to turn over a new leaf."
+
+"All I propose to do--"
+
+"Whatever it is, you're not going to do it," declared the chief.  "Shall
+be back at half-past twelve, if anybody comes."
+
+"It seems to me--"  But Peter was gone.
+
+"Just like them all," wailed the sub-editor.  "They can't argue; when you
+explain things to them, they go out.  It does make me so mad!"
+
+Miss Ramsbotham laughed.  "You are a downtrodden little girl, Tommy."
+
+"As if I couldn't take care of myself!"  Tommy's chin was high up in the
+air.
+
+"Cheer up," suggested Miss Ramsbotham.  "Nobody ever tells me not to do
+anything.  I would change with you if I could."
+
+"I'd have walked into that office and have had that advertisement out of
+old Jowett in five minutes, I know I would," bragged Tommy.  "I can
+always get on with old men."
+
+"Only with the old ones?" queried Miss Ramsbotham.
+
+The door opened.  "Anybody in?" asked the face of Johnny Bulstrode,
+appearing in the jar.
+
+"Can't you see they are?" snapped Tommy.
+
+"Figure of speech," explained Johnny Bulstrode, commonly called "the
+Babe," entering and closing the door behind him.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded the sub-editor.
+
+"Nothing in particular," replied the Babe.
+
+"Wrong time of the day to come for it, half-past eleven in the morning,"
+explained the sub-editor.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" asked the Babe.
+
+"Feeling very cross," confessed the sub-editor.
+
+The childlike face of the Babe expressed sympathetic inquiry.
+
+"We are very indignant," explained Miss Ramsbotham, "because we are not
+allowed to rush off to Cannon Street and coax an advertisement out of old
+Jowett, the soap man.  We feel sure that if we only put on our best hat,
+he couldn't possibly refuse us."
+
+"No coaxing required," thought the sub-editor.  "Once get in to see the
+old fellow and put the actual figures before him, he would clamour to
+come in."
+
+"Won't he see Clodd?" asked the Babe.
+
+"Won't see anybody on behalf of anything new just at present,
+apparently," answered Miss Ramsbotham.  "It was my fault.  I was foolish
+enough to repeat that I had heard he was susceptible to female charm.
+They say it was Mrs. Sarkitt that got the advertisement for _The Lamp_
+out of him.  But, of course, it may not be true."
+
+"Wish I was a soap man and had got advertisements to give away," sighed
+the Babe.
+
+"Wish you were," agreed the sub-editor.
+
+"You should have them all, Tommy."
+
+"My name," corrected him the sub-editor, "is Miss Hope."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Babe.  "I don't know how it is, but one
+gets into the way of calling you Tommy."
+
+"I will thank you," said the sub-editor, "to get out of it."
+
+"I am sorry," said the Babe.
+
+"Don't let it occur again," said the sub-editor.
+
+The Babe stood first on one leg and then on the other, but nothing seemed
+to come of it.  "Well," said the Babe, "I just looked in, that's all.
+Nothing I can do for you?"
+
+"Nothing," thanked him the sub-editor.
+
+"Good morning," said the Babe.
+
+"Good morning," said the sub-editor.
+
+The childlike face of the Babe wore a chastened expression as it slowly
+descended the stairs.  Most of the members of the Autolycus Club looked
+in about once a day to see if they could do anything for Tommy.  Some of
+them had luck.  Only the day before, Porson--a heavy, most uninteresting
+man--had been sent down all the way to Plaistow to inquire after the
+wounded hand of a machine-boy.  Young Alexander, whose poetry some people
+could not even understand, had been commissioned to search London for a
+second-hand edition of Maitland's _Architecture_.  Since a fortnight
+nearly now, when he had been sent out to drive away an organ that would
+not go, Johnny had been given nothing.
+
+Johnny turned the corner into Fleet Street feeling bitter with his lot.  A
+boy carrying a parcel stumbled against him.
+
+"Beg yer pardon--" the small boy looked up into Johnny's face, "miss,"
+added the small boy, dodging the blow and disappearing into the crowd.
+
+The Babe, by reason of his childlike face, was accustomed to insults of
+this character, but to-day it especially irritated him.  Why at twenty-
+two could he not grow even a moustache?  Why was he only five feet five
+and a half?  Why had Fate cursed him with a pink-and-white complexion, so
+that the members of his own club had nicknamed him "the Babe," while
+street-boys as they passed pleaded with him for a kiss?  Why was his very
+voice, a flute-like alto, more suitable--Suddenly an idea sprang to life
+within his brain.  The idea grew.  Passing a barber's shop, Johnny went
+in.
+
+"'Air cut, sir?" remarked the barber, fitting a sheet round Johnny's
+neck.
+
+"No, shave," corrected Johnny.
+
+"Beg pardon," said the barber, substituting a towel for the sheet.  "Do
+you shave up, sir?" later demanded the barber.
+
+"Yes," answered Johnny.
+
+"Pleasant weather we are having," said the barber.
+
+"Very," assented Johnny.
+
+From the barber's, Johnny went to Stinchcombe's, the costumier's, in
+Drury Lane.
+
+"I am playing in a burlesque," explained the Babe.  "I want you to rig me
+out completely as a modern girl."
+
+"Peeth o' luck!" said the shopman.  "Goth the very bundle for you.  Juth
+come in."
+
+"I shall want everything," explained the Babe, "from the boots to the
+hat; stays, petticoats--the whole bag of tricks."
+
+"Regular troutheau there," said the shopman, emptying out the canvas bag
+upon the counter.  "Thry 'em on."
+
+The Babe contented himself with trying on the costume and the boots.
+
+"Juth made for you!" said the shopman.
+
+A little loose about the chest, suggested the Babe.
+
+"Thath's all right," said the shopman.  "Couple o' thmall towelths, all
+thath's wanted."
+
+"You don't think it too showy?" queried the Babe.
+
+"Thowy?  Sthylish, thath's all."
+
+"You are sure everything's here?"
+
+"Everythinkth there.  'Thept the bit o' meat inthide," assured him the
+shopman.
+
+The Babe left a deposit, and gave his name and address.  The shopman
+promised the things should be sent round within an hour.  The Babe, who
+had entered into the spirit of the thing, bought a pair of gloves and a
+small reticule, and made his way to Bow Street.
+
+"I want a woman's light brown wig," said the Babe to Mr. Cox, the
+perruquier.
+
+Mr. Cox tried on two.  The deceptive appearance of the second Mr. Cox
+pronounced as perfect.
+
+"Looks more natural on you than your own hair, blessed if it doesn't!"
+said Mr. Cox.
+
+The wig also was promised within the hour.  The spirit of completeness
+descended upon the Babe.  On his way back to his lodgings in Great Queen
+Street, he purchased a ladylike umbrella and a veil.
+
+Now, a quarter of an hour after Johnny Bulstrode had made his exit by the
+door of Mr. Stinchcombe's shop, one, Harry Bennett, actor and member of
+the Autolycus Club, pushed it open and entered.  The shop was empty.
+Harry Bennett hammered with his stick and waited.  A piled-up bundle of
+clothes lay upon the counter; a sheet of paper, with a name and address
+scrawled across it, rested on the bundle.  Harry Bennett, given to idle
+curiosity, approached and read the same.  Harry Bennett, with his stick,
+poked the bundle, scattering its items over the counter.
+
+"Donth do thath!" said the shopman, coming up.  "Juth been putting 'em
+together."
+
+"What the devil," said Harry Bennett, "is Johnny Bulstrode going to do
+with that rig-out?"
+
+"How thoud I know?" answered the shopman.  "Private theathricals, I
+suppoth.  Friend o' yourth?"
+
+"Yes," replied Harry Bennett.  "By Jove! he ought to make a good girl.
+Should like to see it!"
+
+"Well arthk him for a ticket.  Donth make 'em dirty," suggested the
+shopman.
+
+"I must," said Harry Bennett, and talked about his own affairs.
+
+The rig-out and the wig did not arrive at Johnny's lodgings within the
+hour as promised, but arrived there within three hours, which was as much
+as Johnny had expected.  It took Johnny nearly an hour to dress, but at
+last he stood before the plate-glass panel of the wardrobe transformed.
+Johnny had reason to be pleased with the result.  A tall, handsome girl
+looked back at him out of the glass--a little showily dressed, perhaps,
+but decidedly _chic_.
+
+"Wonder if I ought to have a cloak," mused Johnny, as a ray of sunshine,
+streaming through the window, fell upon the image in the glass.  "Well,
+anyhow, I haven't," thought Johnny, as the sunlight died away again, "so
+it's no good thinking about it."
+
+Johnny seized his reticule and his umbrella and opened cautiously the
+door.  Outside all was silent.  Johnny stealthily descended; in the
+passage paused again.  Voices sounded from the basement.  Feeling like an
+escaped burglar, Johnny slipped the latch of the big door and peeped out.
+A policeman, pasting, turned and looked at him.  Johnny hastily drew back
+and closed the door again.  Somebody was ascending from the kitchen.
+Johnny, caught between two terrors, nearer to the front door than to the
+stairs, having no time, chose the street.  It seemed to Johnny that the
+street was making for him.  A woman came hurriedly towards him.  What was
+she going to say to him?  What should he answer her?  To his surprise she
+passed him, hardly noticing him.  Wondering what miracle had saved him,
+he took a few steps forward.  A couple of young clerks coming up from
+behind turned to look at him, but on encountering his answering stare of
+angry alarm, appeared confused and went their way.  It began to dawn upon
+him that mankind was less discerning than he had feared.  Gaining courage
+as he proceeded, he reached Holborn.  Here the larger crowd swept around
+him indifferent.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Johnny, coming into collision with a stout
+gentleman.
+
+"My fault," replied the stout gentleman, as, smiling, he picked up his
+damaged hat.
+
+"I beg your pardon," repeated Johnny again two minutes later, colliding
+with a tall young lady.
+
+"Should advise you to take something for that squint of yours," remarked
+the tall young lady with severity.
+
+"What's the matter with me?" thought Johnny.  "Seems to be a sort of
+mist--"  The explanation flashed across him.  "Of course," said Johnny to
+himself, "it's this confounded veil!"
+
+Johnny decided to walk to the Marble Soap offices.  "I'll be more used to
+the hang of things by the time I get there if I walk," thought Johnny.
+"Hope the old beggar's in."
+
+In Newgate Street, Johnny paused and pressed his hands against his chest.
+"Funny sort of pain I've got," thought Johnny.  "Wonder if I should shock
+them if I went in somewhere for a drop of brandy?"
+
+"It don't get any better," reflected Johnny, with some alarm, on reaching
+the corner of Cheapside.  "Hope I'm not going to be ill.  Whatever--"  The
+explanation came to him.  "Of course, it's these damned stays!  No wonder
+girls are short-tempered, at times."
+
+At the offices of the Marble Soap, Johnny was treated with marked
+courtesy.  Mr. Jowett was out, was not expected back till five o'clock.
+Would the lady wait, or would she call again?  The lady decided, now she
+was there, to wait.  Would the lady take the easy-chair?  Would the lady
+have the window open or would she have it shut?  Had the lady seen _The
+Times_?
+
+"Or the _Ha'penny Joker_?" suggested a junior clerk, who thereupon was
+promptly sent back to his work.
+
+Many of the senior clerks had occasion to pass through the waiting-room.
+Two of the senior clerks held views about the weather which they appeared
+wishful to express at length.  Johnny began to enjoy himself.  This thing
+was going to be good fun.  By the time the slamming of doors and the
+hurrying of feet announced the advent of the chief, Johnny was looking
+forward to his interview.
+
+It was briefer and less satisfactory than he had anticipated.  Mr. Jowett
+was very busy--did not as a rule see anybody in the afternoon; but of
+course, a lady--"Would Miss--"
+
+"Montgomery."
+
+"Would Miss Montgomery inform Mr. Jowett what it was he might have the
+pleasure of doing for her?"
+
+Miss Montgomery explained.
+
+Mr. Jowett seemed half angry, half amused.
+
+"Really," said Mr. Jowett, "this is hardly playing the game.  Against our
+fellow-men we can protect ourselves, but if the ladies are going to
+attack us--really it isn't fair."
+
+Miss Montgomery pleaded.
+
+"I'll think it over," was all that Mr. Jowett could be made to promise.
+"Look me up again."
+
+"When?" asked Miss Montgomery.
+
+"What's to-day?--Thursday.  Say Monday."  Mr. Jowett rang the bell.  "Take
+my advice," said the old gentleman, laying a fatherly hand on Johnny's
+shoulder, "leave business to us men.  You are a handsome girl.  You can
+do better for yourself than this."
+
+A clerk entered, Johnny rose.
+
+"On Monday next, then," Johnny reminded him.
+
+"At four o'clock," agreed Mr. Jowett.  "Good afternoon."
+
+Johnny went out feeling disappointed, and yet, as he told himself, he
+hadn't done so badly.  Anyhow, there was nothing for it but to wait till
+Monday.  Now he would go home, change his clothes, and get some dinner.
+He hailed a hansom.
+
+"Number twenty-eight--no.  Stop at the Queen's Street corner of Lincoln's
+Inn Fields," Johnny directed the man.
+
+"Quite right, miss," commented the cabman pleasantly.  "Corner's
+best--saves all talk."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Johnny.
+
+"No offence, miss," answered the man.  "We was all young once."
+
+Johnny climbed in.  At the corner of Queen Street and Lincoln's Inn
+Fields, Johnny got out.  Johnny, who had been pondering other matters,
+put his hand instinctively to where, speaking generally, his pocket
+should have been; then recollected himself.
+
+"Let me see, did I think to bring any money out with me, or did I not?"
+mused Johnny, as he stood upon the kerb.
+
+"Look in the ridicule, miss," suggested the cabman.
+
+Johnny looked.  It was empty.
+
+"Perhaps I put it in my pocket," thought Johnny.
+
+The cabman hitched his reins to the whip-socket and leant back.
+
+"It's somewhere about here, I know, I saw it," Johnny told himself.
+"Sorry to keep you waiting," Johnny added aloud to the cabman.
+
+"Don't you worry about that, miss," replied the cabman civilly; "we are
+used to it.  A shilling a quarter of an hour is what we charge."
+
+"Of all the damned silly tricks!" muttered Johnny to himself.
+
+Two small boys and a girl carrying a baby paused, interested.
+
+"Go away," told them the cabman.  "You'll have troubles of your own one
+day."
+
+The urchins moved a few steps further, then halted again and were joined
+by a slatternly woman and another boy.
+
+"Got it!" cried Johnny, unable to suppress his delight as his hand
+slipped through a fold.  The lady with the baby, without precisely
+knowing why, set up a shrill cheer.  Johnny's delight died away; it
+wasn't the pocket-hole.  Short of taking the skirt off and turning it
+inside out, it didn't seem to Johnny that he ever would find that pocket.
+
+Then in that moment of despair he came across it accidentally.  It was as
+empty as the reticule!
+
+"I am sorry," said Johnny to the cabman, "but I appear to have come out
+without my purse."
+
+The cabman said he had heard that tale before, and was making
+preparations to descend.  The crowd, now numbering eleven, looked
+hopeful.  It occurred to Johnny later that he might have offered his
+umbrella to the cabman; at least it would have fetched the eighteenpence.
+One thinks of these things afterwards.  The only idea that occurred to
+him at the moment was that of getting home.
+
+"'Ere, 'old my 'orse a minute, one of yer," shouted the cabman.
+
+Half a dozen willing hands seized the dozing steed and roused it into
+madness.
+
+"Hi! stop 'er!" roared the cabman.
+
+"She's down!" shouted the excited crowd.
+
+"Tripped over 'er skirt," explained the slatternly woman.  "They do
+'amper you."
+
+"No, she's not.  She's up again!" vociferated a delighted plumber, with a
+sounding slap on his own leg.  "Gor blimy, if she ain't a good 'un!"
+
+Fortunately the Square was tolerably clear and Johnny a good runner.
+Holding now his skirt and petticoat high in his left hand, Johnny moved
+across the Square at the rate of fifteen miles an hour.  A butcher's boy
+sprang in front of him with arms held out to stop him.  The thing that
+for the next three months annoyed that butcher boy most was hearing
+shouted out after him "Yah! who was knocked down and run over by a lidy?"
+By the time Johnny reached the Strand, _via_ Clement's Inn, the hue and
+cry was far behind.  Johnny dropped his skirts and assumed a more girlish
+pace.  Through Bow Street and Long Acre he reached Great Queen Street in
+safety.  Upon his own doorstep he began to laugh.  His afternoon's
+experience had been amusing; still, on the whole, he wasn't sorry it was
+over.  One can have too much even of the best of jokes.  Johnny rang the
+bell.
+
+The door opened.  Johnny would have walked in had not a big, raw-boned
+woman barred his progress.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded the raw-boned woman.
+
+"Want to come in," explained Johnny.
+
+"What do you want to come in for?"
+
+This appeared to Johnny a foolish question.  On reflection he saw the
+sense of it.  This raw-boned woman was not Mrs. Pegg, his landlady.  Some
+friend of hers, he supposed.
+
+"It's all right," said Johnny, "I live here.  Left my latchkey at home,
+that's all."
+
+"There's no females lodging here," declared the raw-boned lady.  "And
+what's more, there's going to be none."
+
+All this was very vexing.  Johnny, in his joy at reaching his own
+doorstep, had not foreseen these complications.  Now it would be
+necessary to explain things.  He only hoped the story would not get round
+to the fellows at the club.
+
+"Ask Mrs. Pegg to step up for a minute," requested Johnny.
+
+"Not at 'ome," explained the raw-boned lady.
+
+"Not--not at home?"
+
+"Gone to Romford, if you wish to know, to see her mother."
+
+"Gone to Romford?"
+
+"I said Romford, didn't I?" retorted the raw-boned lady, tartly.
+
+"What--what time do you expect her in?"
+
+"Sunday evening, six o'clock," replied the raw-boned lady.
+
+Johnny looked at the raw-boned lady, imagined himself telling the raw-
+boned lady the simple, unvarnished truth, and the raw-boned lady's utter
+disbelief of every word of it.  An inspiration came to his aid.
+
+"I am Mr. Bulstrode's sister," said Johnny meekly; "he's expecting me."
+
+"Thought you said you lived here?" reminded him the raw-boned lady.
+
+"I meant that he lived here," replied poor Johnny still more meekly.  "He
+has the second floor, you know."
+
+"I know," replied the raw-boned lady.  "Not in just at present."
+
+"Not in?"
+
+"Went out at three o'clock."
+
+"I'll go up to his room and wait for him," said Johnny.
+
+"No, you won't," said the raw-boned lady.
+
+For an instant it occurred to Johnny to make a dash for it, but the raw-
+boned lady looked both formidable and determined.  There would be a big
+disturbance--perhaps the police called in.  Johnny had often wanted to
+see his name in print: in connection with this affair he somehow felt he
+didn't.
+
+"Do let me in," Johnny pleaded; "I have nowhere else to go."
+
+"You have a walk and cool yourself," suggested the raw-boned lady.  "Don't
+expect he will be long."
+
+"But, you see--"
+
+The raw-boned lady slammed the door.
+
+Outside a restaurant in Wellington Street, from which proceeded savoury
+odours, Johnny paused and tried to think.
+
+"What the devil did I do with that umbrella?  I had it--no, I didn't.
+Must have dropped it, I suppose, when that silly ass tried to stop me.  By
+Jove! I am having luck!"
+
+Outside another restaurant in the Strand Johnny paused again.  "How am I
+to live till Sunday night?  Where am I to sleep?  If I telegraph
+home--damn it! how can I telegraph?  I haven't got a penny.  This is
+funny," said Johnny, unconsciously speaking aloud; "upon my word, this is
+funny!  Oh! you go to--."
+
+Johnny hurled this last at the head of an overgrown errand-boy whose
+intention had been to offer sympathy.
+
+"Well, I never!" commented a passing flower-girl.  "Calls 'erself a lidy,
+I suppose."
+
+"Nowadays," observed the stud and button merchant at the corner of Exeter
+Street, "they make 'em out of anything."
+
+Drawn by a notion that was forming in his mind, Johnny turned his steps
+up Bedford Street.  "Why not?" mused Johnny.  "Nobody else seems to have
+a suspicion.  Why should they?  I'll never hear the last of it if they
+find me out.  But why should they find me out?  Well, something's got to
+be done."
+
+Johnny walked on quickly.  At the door of the Autolycus Club he was
+undecided for a moment, then took his courage in both hands and plunged
+through the swing doors.
+
+"Is Mr. Herring--Mr. Jack Herring--here?"
+
+"Find him in the smoking-room, Mr. Bulstrode," answered old Goslin, who
+was reading the evening paper.
+
+"Oh, would you mind asking him to step out a moment?"
+
+Old Goslin looked up, took off his spectacles, rubbed them, put them on
+again.
+
+"Please say Miss Bulstrode--Mr. Bulstrode's sister."
+
+Old Goslin found Jack Herring the centre of an earnest argument on
+Hamlet--was he really mad?
+
+"A lady to see you, Mr. Herring," announced old Goslin.
+
+"A what?"
+
+"Miss Bulstrode--Mr. Bulstrode's sister.  She's waiting in the hall."
+
+"Never knew he had a sister," said Jack Herring, rising.
+
+"Wait a minute," said Harry Bennett.  "Shut that door.  Don't go."  This
+to old Goslin, who closed the door and returned.  "Lady in a heliotrope
+dress with a lace collar, three flounces on the skirt?"
+
+"That's right, Mr. Bennett," agreed old Goslin.
+
+"It's the Babe himself!" asserted Harry Bennett.
+
+The question of Hamlet's madness was forgotten.
+
+"Was in at Stinchcombe's this morning," explained Harry Bennett; "saw the
+clothes on the counter addressed to him.  That's the identical frock.
+This is just a 'try on'--thinks he's going to have a lark with us."
+
+The Autolycus Club looked round at itself.
+
+"I can see verra promising possibilities in this, provided the thing is
+properly managed," said the Wee Laddie, after a pause.
+
+"So can I," agreed Jack Herring.  "Keep where you are, all of you.
+'Twould be a pity to fool it."
+
+The Autolycus Club waited.  Jack Herring re-entered the room.
+
+"One of the saddest stories I have ever heard in all my life," explained
+Jack Herring in a whisper.  "Poor girl left Derbyshire this morning to
+come and see her brother; found him out--hasn't been seen at his lodgings
+since three o'clock; fears something may have happened to him.  Landlady
+gone to Romford to see her mother; strange woman in charge, won't let her
+in to wait for him."
+
+"How sad it is when trouble overtakes the innocent and helpless!"
+murmured Somerville the Briefless.
+
+"That's not the worst of it," continued Jack.  "The dear girl has been
+robbed of everything she possesses, even of her umbrella, and hasn't got
+a _sou_; hasn't had any dinner, and doesn't know where to sleep."
+
+"Sounds a bit elaborate," thought Porson.
+
+"I think I can understand it," said the Briefless one.  "What has
+happened is this.  He's dressed up thinking to have a bit of fun with us,
+and has come out, forgetting to put any money or his latchkey in his
+pocket.  His landlady may have gone to Romford or may not.  In any case,
+he would have to knock at the door and enter into explanations.  What
+does he suggest--the loan of a sovereign?"
+
+"The loan of two," replied Jack Herring.
+
+"To buy himself a suit of clothes.  Don't you do it, Jack.  Providence
+has imposed this upon us.  Our duty is to show him the folly of indulging
+in senseless escapades."
+
+"I think we might give him a dinner," thought the stout and sympathetic
+Porson.
+
+"What I propose to do," grinned Jack, "is to take him round to Mrs.
+Postwhistle's.  She's under a sort of obligation to me.  It was I who got
+her the post office.  We'll leave him there for a night, with
+instructions to Mrs. P. to keep a motherly eye on him.  To-morrow he
+shall have his 'bit of fun,' and I guess he'll be the first to get tired
+of the joke."
+
+It looked a promising plot.  Seven members of the Autolycus Club
+gallantly undertook to accompany "Miss Bulstrode" to her lodgings.  Jack
+Herring excited jealousy by securing the privilege of carrying her
+reticule.  "Miss Bulstrode" was given to understand that anything any of
+the seven could do for her, each and every would be delighted to do, if
+only for the sake of her brother, one of the dearest boys that ever
+breathed--a bit of an ass, though that, of course, he could not help.
+"Miss Bulstrode" was not as grateful as perhaps she should have been.  Her
+idea still was that if one of them would lend her a couple of sovereigns,
+the rest need not worry themselves further.  This, purely in her own
+interests, they declined to do.  She had suffered one extensive robbery
+that day already, as Jack reminded her.  London was a city of danger to
+the young and inexperienced.  Far better that they should watch over her
+and provide for her simple wants.  Painful as it was to refuse a lady, a
+beloved companion's sister's welfare was yet dearer to them.  "Miss
+Bulstrode's" only desire was not to waste their time.  Jack Herring's
+opinion was that there existed no true Englishman who would grudge time
+spent upon succouring a beautiful maiden in distress.
+
+Arrived at the little grocer's shop in Rolls Court, Jack Herring drew
+Mrs. Postwhistle aside.
+
+"She's the sister of a very dear friend of ours," explained Jack Herring.
+
+"A fine-looking girl," commented Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"I shall be round again in the morning.  Don't let her out of your sight,
+and, above all, don't lend her any money," directed Jack Herring.
+
+"I understand," replied Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"Miss Bulstrode" having despatched an excellent supper of cold mutton and
+bottled beer, leant back in her chair and crossed her legs.
+
+"I have often wondered," remarked Miss Bulstrode, her eyes fixed upon the
+ceiling, "what a cigarette would taste like."
+
+"Taste nasty, I should say, the first time," thought Mrs. Postwhistle,
+who was knitting.
+
+"Some girls, so I have heard," remarked Miss Bulstrode, "smoke
+cigarettes."
+
+"Not nice girls," thought Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"One of the nicest girls I ever knew," remarked Miss Bulstrode, "always
+smoked a cigarette after supper.  Said it soothed her nerves."
+
+"Wouldn't 'ave thought so if I'd 'ad charge of 'er," said Mrs.
+Postwhistle.
+
+"I think," said Miss Bulstrode, who seemed restless, "I think I shall go
+for a little walk before turning in."
+
+"Perhaps it would do us good," agreed Mrs. Postwhistle, laying down her
+knitting.
+
+"Don't you trouble to come," urged the thoughtful Miss Bulstrode.  "You
+look tired."
+
+"Not at all," replied Mrs. Postwhistle.  "Feel I should like it."
+
+In some respects Mrs. Postwhistle proved an admirable companion.  She
+asked no questions, and only spoke when spoken to, which, during that
+walk, was not often.  At the end of half an hour, Miss Bulstrode pleaded
+a headache and thought she would return home and go to bed.  Mrs.
+Postwhistle thought it a reasonable idea.
+
+"Well, it's better than tramping the streets," muttered Johnny, as the
+bedroom door was closed behind him, "and that's all one can say for it.
+Must get hold of a smoke to-morrow, if I have to rob the till.  What's
+that?"  Johnny stole across on, tiptoe.  "Confound it!" said Johnny, "if
+she hasn't locked the door!"
+
+Johnny sat down upon the bed and took stock of his position.  "It doesn't
+seem to me," thought Johnny, "that I'm ever going to get out of this
+mess."  Johnny, still muttering, unfastened his stays.  "Thank God,
+that's off!" ejaculated Johnny piously, as he watched his form slowly
+expanding.  "Suppose I'll be used to them before I've finished with
+them."
+
+Johnny had a night of dreams.
+
+For the whole of next day, which was Friday, Johnny remained "Miss
+Bulstrode," hoping against hope to find an opportunity to escape from his
+predicament without confession.  The entire Autolycus Club appeared to
+have fallen in love with him.
+
+"Thought I was a bit of a fool myself," mused Johnny, "where a petticoat
+was concerned.  Don't believe these blithering idiots have ever seen a
+girl before."
+
+They came in ones, they came in little parties, and tendered him
+devotion.  Even Mrs. Postwhistle, accustomed to regard human phenomena
+without comment, remarked upon it.
+
+"When you are all tired of it," said Mrs. Postwhistle to Jack Herring,
+"let me know."
+
+"The moment we find her brother," explained Jack Herring, "of course we
+shall take her to him."
+
+"Nothing like looking in the right place for a thing when you've finished
+looking in the others," observed Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Jack.
+
+"Just what I say," answered Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+Jack Herring looked at Mrs. Postwhistle.  But Mrs. Postwhistle's face was
+not of the expressive order.
+
+"Post office still going strong?" asked Jack Herring.
+
+"The post office 'as been a great 'elp to me," admitted Mrs. Postwhistle;
+"and I'm not forgetting that I owe it to you."
+
+"Don't mention it," murmured Jack Herring.
+
+They brought her presents--nothing very expensive, more as tokens of
+regard: dainty packets of sweets, nosegays of simple flowers, bottles of
+scent.  To Somerville "Miss Bulstrode" hinted that if he really did
+desire to please her, and wasn't merely talking through his hat--Miss
+Bulstrode apologised for the slang, which, she feared, she must have
+picked up from her brother--he might give her a box of Messani's
+cigarettes, size No. 2.  The suggestion pained him.  Somerville the
+Briefless was perhaps old-fashioned.  Miss Bulstrode cut him short by
+agreeing that he was, and seemed disinclined for further conversation.
+
+They took her to Madame Tussaud's.  They took her up the Monument.  They
+took her to the Tower of London.  In the evening they took her to the
+Polytechnic to see Pepper's Ghost.  They made a merry party wherever they
+went.
+
+"Seem to be enjoying themselves!" remarked other sightseers, surprised
+and envious.
+
+"Girl seems to be a bit out of it," remarked others, more observant.
+
+"Sulky-looking bit o' goods, I call her," remarked some of the ladies.
+
+The fortitude with which Miss Bulstrode bore the mysterious disappearance
+of her brother excited admiration.
+
+"Hadn't we better telegraph to your people in Derbyshire?" suggested Jack
+Herring.
+
+"Don't do it," vehemently protested the thoughtful Miss Bulstrode; "it
+might alarm them.  The best plan is for you to lend me a couple of
+sovereigns and let me return home quietly."
+
+"You might be robbed again," feared Jack Herring.  "I'll go down with
+you."
+
+"Perhaps he'll turn up to-morrow," thought Miss Bulstrode.  "Expect he's
+gone on a visit."
+
+"He ought not to have done it," thought Jack Herring, "knowing you were
+coming."
+
+"Oh! he's like that," explained Miss Bulstrode.
+
+"If I had a young and beautiful sister--" said Jack Herring.
+
+"Oh! let's talk of something else," suggested Miss Bulstrode.  "You make
+me tired."
+
+With Jack Herring, in particular, Johnny was beginning to lose patience.
+That "Miss Bulstrode's" charms had evidently struck Jack Herring all of a
+heap, as the saying is, had in the beginning amused Master Johnny.
+Indeed--as in the seclusion of his bedchamber over the little grocer's
+shop he told himself with bitter self-reproach--he had undoubtedly
+encouraged the man.  From admiration Jack had rapidly passed to
+infatuation, from infatuation to apparent imbecility.  Had Johnny's mind
+been less intent upon his own troubles, he might have been suspicious.  As
+it was, and after all that had happened, nothing now could astonish
+Johnny.  "Thank Heaven," murmured Johnny, as he blew out the light, "this
+Mrs. Postwhistle appears to be a reliable woman."
+
+Now, about the same time that Johnny's head was falling thus upon his
+pillow, the Autolycus Club sat discussing plans for their next day's
+entertainment.
+
+"I think," said Jack Herring, "the Crystal Palace in the morning when
+it's nice and quiet."
+
+"To be followed by Greenwich Hospital in the afternoon," suggested
+Somerville.
+
+"Winding up with the Moore and Burgess Minstrels in the evening," thought
+Porson.
+
+"Hardly the place for the young person," feared Jack Herring.  "Some of
+the jokes--"
+
+"Mr. Brandram gives a reading of _Julius Caesar_ at St. George's Hall,"
+the Wee Laddie informed them for their guidance.
+
+"Hallo!" said Alexander the Poet, entering at the moment.  "What are you
+all talking about?"
+
+"We were discussing where to take Miss Bulstrode to-morrow evening,"
+informed him Jack Herring.
+
+"Miss Bulstrode," repeated the Poet in a tone of some surprise.  "Do you
+mean Johnny Bulstrode's sister?"
+
+"That's the lady," answered Jack.  "But how do you come to know about
+her?  Thought you were in Yorkshire."
+
+"Came up yesterday," explained the Poet.  "Travelled up with her."
+
+"Travelled up with her?"
+
+"From Matlock Bath.  What's the matter with you all?" demanded the Poet.
+"You all of you look--"
+
+"Sit down," said the Briefless one to the Poet.  "Let's talk this matter
+over quietly."
+
+Alexander the Poet, mystified, sat down.
+
+"You say you travelled up to London yesterday with Miss Bulstrode.  You
+are sure it was Miss Bulstrode?"
+
+"Sure!" retorted the Poet.  "Why, I've known her ever since she was a
+baby."
+
+"About what time did you reach London?"
+
+"Three-thirty."
+
+"And what became of her?  Where did she say she was going?"
+
+"I never asked her.  The last I saw of her she was getting into a cab.  I
+had an appointment myself, and was--I say, what's the matter with
+Herring?"
+
+Herring had risen and was walking about with his head between his hands.
+
+"Never mind him.  Miss Bulstrode is a lady of about--how old?"
+
+"Eighteen--no, nineteen last birthday."
+
+"A tall, handsome sort of girl?"
+
+"Yes.  I say, has anything happened to her?"
+
+"Nothing has happened to her," assured him Somerville.  "_She's_ all
+right.  Been having rather a good time, on the whole."
+
+The Poet was relieved to hear it.
+
+"I asked her an hour ago," said Jack Herring, who was still holding his
+head between his hands as if to make sure it was there, "if she thought
+she could ever learn to love me.  Would you say that could be construed
+into an offer of marriage?"
+
+The remainder of the Club was unanimously of opinion that, practically
+speaking, it was a proposal.
+
+"I don't see it," argued Jack Herring.  "It was merely in the nature of a
+remark."
+
+The Club was of opinion that such quibbling was unworthy of a gentleman.
+
+It appeared to be a case for prompt action.  Jack Herring sat down and
+then and there began a letter to Miss Bulstrode, care of Mrs.
+Postwhistle.
+
+"But what I don't understand--" said Alexander the Poet.
+
+"Oh! take him away somewhere and tell him, someone," moaned Jack Herring.
+"How can I think with all this chatter going on?"
+
+"But why did Bennett--" whispered Porson.
+
+"Where is Bennett?" demanded half a dozen fierce voices.
+
+Harry Bennett had not been seen all day.
+
+Jack's letter was delivered to "Miss Bulstrode" the next morning at
+breakfast-time.  Having perused it, Miss Bulstrode rose and requested of
+Mrs. Postwhistle the loan of half a crown.
+
+"Mr. Herring's particular instructions were," explained Mrs. Postwhistle,
+"that, above all things, I was not to lend you any money."
+
+"When you have read that," replied Miss Bulstrode, handing her the
+letter, "perhaps you will agree with me that Herring is--an ass."
+
+Mrs. Postwhistle read the letter and produced the half-crown.
+
+"Better get a shave with part of it," suggested Mrs. Postwhistle.  "That
+is, if you are going to play the fool much longer."
+
+"Miss Bulstrode" opened his eyes.  Mrs. Postwhistle went on with her
+breakfast.
+
+"Don't tell them," said Johnny; "not just for a little while, at all
+events."
+
+"Nothing to do with me," replied Mrs. Postwhistle.
+
+Twenty minutes later, the real Miss Bulstrode, on a visit to her aunt in
+Kensington, was surprised at receiving, enclosed in an envelope, the
+following hastily scrawled note:--
+
+   "Want to speak to you at once--_alone_.  Don't yell when you see me.
+   It's all right.  Can explain in two ticks.--Your loving brother,
+   JOHNNY."
+
+It took longer than two ticks; but at last the Babe came to an end of it.
+
+"When you have done laughing," said the Babe.
+
+"But you look so ridiculous," said his sister.
+
+"_They_ didn't think so," retorted the Babe.  "I took them in all right.
+Guess you've never had as much attention, all in one day."
+
+"Are you sure you took them in?" queried his sister.
+
+"If you will come to the Club at eight o'clock this evening," said the
+Babe, "I'll prove it to you.  Perhaps I'll take you on to a theatre
+afterwards--if you're good."
+
+The Babe himself walked into the Autolycus Club a few minutes before
+eight and encountered an atmosphere of restraint.
+
+"Thought you were lost," remarked Somerville coldly.
+
+"Called away suddenly--very important business," explained the Babe.
+"Awfully much obliged to all you fellows for all you have been doing for
+my sister.  She's just been telling me."
+
+"Don't mention it," said two or three.
+
+"Awfully good of you, I'm sure," persisted the Babe.  "Don't know what
+she would have done without you."
+
+A mere nothing, the Club assured him.  The blushing modesty of the
+Autolycus Club at hearing of their own good deeds was touching.  Left to
+themselves, they would have talked of quite other things.  As a matter of
+fact, they tried to.
+
+"Never heard her speak so enthusiastically of anyone as she does of you,
+Jack," said the Babe, turning to Jack Herring.
+
+"Of course, you know, dear boy," explained Jack Herring, "anything I
+could do for a sister of yours--"
+
+"I know, dear boy," replied the Babe; "I always felt it."
+
+"Say no more about it," urged Jack Herring.
+
+"She couldn't quite make out that letter of yours this morning,"
+continued the Babe, ignoring Jack's request.  "She's afraid you think her
+ungrateful."
+
+"It seemed to me, on reflection," explained Jack Herring, "that on one or
+two little matters she may have misunderstood me.  As I wrote her, there
+are days when I don't seem altogether to quite know what I'm doing."
+
+"Rather awkward," thought the Babe.
+
+"It is," agreed Jack Herring.  "Yesterday was one of them."
+
+"She tells me you were most kind to her," the Babe reassured him.  "She
+thought at first it was a little uncivil, your refusing to lend her any
+money.  But as I put it to her--"
+
+"It was silly of me," interrupted Jack.  "I see that now.  I went round
+this morning meaning to make it all right.  But she was gone, and Mrs.
+Postwhistle seemed to think I had better leave things as they were.  I
+blame myself exceedingly."
+
+"My dear boy, don't blame yourself for anything.  You acted nobly," the
+Babe told him.  "She's coming here to call for me this evening on purpose
+to thank you."
+
+"I'd rather not," said Jack Herring.
+
+"Nonsense," said the Babe.
+
+"You must excuse me," insisted Jack Herring.  "I don't mean it rudely,
+but really I'd rather not see her."
+
+"But here she is," said the Babe, taking at that moment the card from old
+Goslin's hand.  "She will think it so strange."
+
+"I'd really rather not," repeated poor Jack.
+
+"It seems discourteous," suggested Somerville.
+
+"You go," suggested Jack.
+
+"She doesn't want to see me," explained Somerville.
+
+"Yes she does," corrected him the Babe.
+
+"I'd forgotten, she wants to see you both."
+
+"If I go," said Jack, "I shall tell her the plain truth."
+
+"Do you know," said Somerville, "I'm thinking that will be the shortest
+way."
+
+Miss Bulstrode was seated in the hall.  Jack Herring and Somerville both
+thought her present quieter style of dress suited her much better.
+
+"Here he is," announced the Babe, in triumph.  "Here's Jack Herring and
+here's Somerville.  Do you know, I could hardly persuade them to come out
+and see you.  Dear old Jack, he always was so shy."
+
+Miss Bulstrode rose.  She said she could never thank them sufficiently
+for all their goodness to her.  Miss Bulstrode seemed quite overcome.  Her
+voice trembled with emotion.
+
+"Before we go further, Miss Bulstrode," said Jack Herring, "it will be
+best to tell you that all along we thought you were your brother, dressed
+up as a girl."
+
+"Oh!" said the Babe, "so that's the explanation, is it?  If I had only
+known--"  Then the Babe stopped, and wished he hadn't spoken.
+
+Somerville seized him by the shoulders and, with a sudden jerk, stood him
+beside his sister under the gas-jet.
+
+"You little brute!" said Somerville.  "It was you all along."  And the
+Babe, seeing the game was up, and glad that the joke had not been
+entirely on one side, confessed.
+
+Jack Herring and Somerville the Briefless went that night with Johnny and
+his sister to the theatre--and on other nights.  Miss Bulstrode thought
+Jack Herring very nice, and told her brother so.  But she thought
+Somerville the Briefless even nicer, and later, under cross-examination,
+when Somerville was no longer briefless, told Somerville so himself.
+
+But that has nothing to do with this particular story, the end of which
+is that Miss Bulstrode kept the appointment made for Monday afternoon
+between "Miss Montgomery" and Mr. Jowett, and secured thereby the Marble
+Soap advertisement for the back page of _Good Humour_ for six months, at
+twenty-five pounds a week.
+
+
+
+
+STORY THE SEVENTH--Dick Danvers presents his Petition
+
+
+William Clodd, mopping his brow, laid down the screwdriver, and stepping
+back, regarded the result of his labours with evident satisfaction.
+
+"It looks like a bookcase," said William Clodd.  "You might sit in the
+room for half an hour and never know it wasn't a bookcase."
+
+What William Clodd had accomplished was this: he had had prepared, after
+his own design, what appeared to be four shelves laden with works
+suggestive of thought and erudition.  As a matter of fact, it was not a
+bookcase, but merely a flat board, the books merely the backs of volumes
+that had long since found their way into the paper-mill.  This artful
+deception William Clodd had screwed upon a cottage piano standing in the
+corner of the editorial office of _Good Humour_.  Half a dozen real
+volumes piled upon the top of the piano completed the illusion.  As
+William Clodd had proudly remarked, a casual visitor might easily have
+been deceived.
+
+"If you had to sit in the room while she was practising mixed scales,
+you'd be quickly undeceived," said the editor of _Good Humour_, one Peter
+Hope.  He spoke bitterly.
+
+"You are not always in," explained Clodd.  "There must be hours when she
+is here alone, with nothing else to do.  Besides, you will get used to it
+after a while."
+
+"You, I notice, don't try to get used to it," snarled Peter Hope.  "You
+always go out the moment she commences."
+
+"A friend of mine," continued William Clodd, "worked in an office over a
+piano-shop for seven years, and when the shop closed, it nearly ruined
+his business; couldn't settle down to work for want of it."
+
+"Why doesn't he come here?" asked Peter Hope.  "The floor above is
+vacant."
+
+"Can't," explained William Clodd.  "He's dead."
+
+"I can quite believe it," commented Peter Hope.
+
+"It was a shop where people came and practised, paying sixpence an hour,
+and he had got to like it--said it made a cheerful background to his
+thoughts.  Wonderful what you can get accustomed to."
+
+"What's the good of it?" demanded Peter Hope.
+
+"What's the good of it!" retorted William Clodd indignantly.  "Every girl
+ought to know how to play the piano.  A nice thing if when her lover asks
+her to play something to him--"
+
+"I wonder you don't start a matrimonial agency," sneered Peter Hope.
+"Love and marriage--you think of nothing else."
+
+"When you are bringing up a young girl--" argued Clodd.
+
+"But you're not," interrupted Peter; "that's just what I'm trying to get
+out of your head.  It is I who am bringing her up.  And between
+ourselves, I wish you wouldn't interfere so much."
+
+"You are not fit to bring up a girl."
+
+"I've brought her up for seven years without your help.  She's my adopted
+daughter, not yours.  I do wish people would learn to mind their own
+business."
+
+"You've done very well--"
+
+"Thank you," said Peter Hope sarcastically.  "It's very kind of you.
+Perhaps when you've time, you'll write me out a testimonial."
+
+"--up till now," concluded the imperturbable Clodd.  "A girl of eighteen
+wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics.  You
+don't understand them."
+
+"I do understand them," asserted Peter Hope.  "What do you know about
+them?  You're not a father."
+
+"You've done your best," admitted William Clodd in a tone of patronage
+that irritated Peter greatly; "but you're a dreamer; you don't know the
+world.  The time is coming when the girl will have to think of a
+husband."
+
+"There's no need for her to think of a husband, not for years," retorted
+Peter Hope.  "And even when she does, is strumming on the piano going to
+help her?"
+
+"I tink--I tink," said Dr. Smith, who had hitherto remained a silent
+listener, "our young frent Clodd is right.  You haf never quite got over
+your idea dat she was going to be a boy.  You haf taught her de tings a
+boy should know."
+
+"You cut her hair," added Clodd.
+
+"I don't," snapped Peter.
+
+"You let her have it cut--it's the same thing.  At eighteen she knows
+more about the ancient Greeks and Romans than she does about her own
+frocks."
+
+"De young girl," argued the doctor, "what is she?  De flower dat makes
+bright for us de garden of life, de gurgling brook dat murmurs by de
+dusty highway, de cheerful fire--"
+
+"She can't be all of them," snapped Peter, who was a stickler for style.
+"Do keep to one simile at a time."
+
+"Now you listen to plain sense," said William Clodd.  "You want--we all
+want--the girl to be a success all round."
+
+"I want her--"  Peter Hope was rummaging among the litter on the desk.  It
+certainly was not there.  Peter pulled out a drawer-two drawers.  "I
+wish," said Peter Hope, "I wish sometimes she wasn't quite so clever."
+
+The old doctor rummaged among dusty files of papers in a corner.  Clodd
+found it on the mantelpiece concealed beneath the hollow foot of a big
+brass candlestick, and handed it to Peter.
+
+Peter had one vice--the taking in increasing quantities of snuff, which
+was harmful for him, as he himself admitted.  Tommy, sympathetic to most
+masculine frailties, was severe, however, upon this one.
+
+"You spill it upon your shirt and on your coat," had argued Tommy.  "I
+like to see you always neat.  Besides, it isn't a nice habit.  I do wish,
+dad, you'd give it up."
+
+"I must," Peter had agreed.  "I'll break myself of it.  But not all at
+once--it would be a wrench; by degrees, Tommy, by degrees."
+
+So a compromise had been compounded.  Tommy was to hide the snuff-box.  It
+was to be somewhere in the room and to be accessible, but that was all.
+Peter, when self-control had reached the breaking-point, might try and
+find it.  Occasionally, luck helping Peter, he would find it early in the
+day, when he would earn his own bitter self-reproaches by indulging in
+quite an orgie.  But more often Tommy's artfulness was such that he would
+be compelled, by want of time, to abandon the search.  Tommy always knew
+when he had failed by the air of indignant resignation with which he
+would greet her on her return.  Then perhaps towards evening, Peter,
+looking up, would see the box open before his nose, above it, a pair of
+reproving black eyes, their severity counterbalanced by a pair of full
+red lips trying not to smile.  And Peter, knowing that only one pinch
+would be permitted, would dip deeply.
+
+"I want her," said Peter Hope, feeling with his snuff-box in his hand
+more confidence in his own judgment, "to be a sensible, clever woman,
+capable of earning her own living and of being independent; not a mere
+helpless doll, crying for some man to come and take care of her."
+
+"A woman's business," asserted Clodd, "is to be taken care of."
+
+"Some women, perhaps," admitted Peter; "but Tommy, you know very well, is
+not going to be the ordinary type of woman.  She has brains; she will
+make her way in the world."
+
+"It doesn't depend upon brains," said Clodd.  "She hasn't got the
+elbows."
+
+"The elbows?"
+
+"They are not sharp enough.  The last 'bus home on a wet night tells you
+whether a woman is capable of pushing her own way in the world.  Tommy's
+the sort to get left on the kerb."
+
+"She's the sort," retorted Peter, "to make a name for herself and to be
+able to afford a cab.  Don't you bully me!"  Peter sniffed
+self-assertiveness from between his thumb and finger.
+
+"Yes, I shall," Clodd told him, "on this particular point.  The poor
+girl's got no mother."
+
+Fortunately for the general harmony the door opened at the moment to
+admit the subject of discussion.
+
+"Got that _Daisy Blossom_ advertisement out of old Blatchley," announced
+Tommy, waving triumphantly a piece of paper over her head.
+
+"No!" exclaimed Peter.  "How did you manage it?"
+
+"Asked him for it," was Tommy's explanation.
+
+"Very odd," mused Peter; "asked the old idiot for it myself only last
+week.  He refused it point-blank."
+
+Clodd snorted reproof.  "You know I don't like your doing that sort of
+thing.  It isn't proper for a young girl--"
+
+"It's all right," assured him Tommy; "he's bald!"
+
+"That makes no difference," was Clodd's opinion.
+
+"Yes it does," was Tommy's.  "I like them bald."
+
+Tommy took Peter's head between her hands and kissed it, and in doing so
+noticed the tell-tale specks of snuff.
+
+"Just a pinch, my dear," explained Peter, "the merest pinch."
+
+Tommy took up the snuff-box from the desk.  "I'll show you where I'm
+going to put it this time."  She put it in her pocket.  Peter's face
+fell.
+
+"What do you think of it?" said Clodd.  He led her to the corner.  "Good
+idea, ain't it?"
+
+"Why, where's the piano?" demanded Tommy.
+
+Clodd turned in delighted triumph to the others.
+
+"Humbug!" growled Peter.
+
+"It isn't humbug," cried Clodd indignantly.  "She thought it was a
+bookcase--anybody would.  You'll be able to sit there and practise by the
+hour," explained Clodd to Tommy.  "When you hear anybody coming up the
+stairs, you can leave off."
+
+"How can she hear anything when she--"  A bright idea occurred to Peter.
+"Don't you think, Clodd, as a practical man," suggested Peter
+insinuatingly, adopting the Socratic method, "that if we got her one of
+those dummy pianos--you know what I mean; it's just like an ordinary
+piano, only you don't hear it?"
+
+Clodd shook his head.  "No good at all.  Can't tell the effect she is
+producing."
+
+"Quite so.  Then, on the other hand, Clodd, don't you think that hearing
+the effect they are producing may sometimes discourage the beginner?"
+
+Clodd's opinion was that such discouragement was a thing to be battled
+with.
+
+Tommy, who had seated herself, commenced a scale in contrary motion.
+
+"Well, I'm going across to the printer's now," explained Clodd, taking up
+his hat.  "Got an appointment with young Grindley at three.  You stick to
+it.  A spare half-hour now and then that you never miss does wonders.
+You've got it in you."  With these encouraging remarks to Tommy, Clodd
+disappeared.
+
+"Easy for him," muttered Peter bitterly.  "Always does have an
+appointment outside the moment she begins."
+
+Tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance.  Passers-
+by in Crane Court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the
+publishing and editorial offices of _Good Humour_ with troubled looks,
+then hurried on.
+
+"She has--remarkably firm douch!" shouted the doctor into Peter's ear.
+"Will see you--evening.  Someting--say to you."
+
+The fat little doctor took his hat and departed.  Tommy, ceasing
+suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of Peter's chair.
+
+"Feeling grumpy?" asked Tommy.
+
+"It isn't," explained Peter, "that I mind the noise.  I'd put up with
+that if I could see the good of it."
+
+"It's going to help me to get a husband, dad.  Seems to me an odd way of
+doing it; but Billy says so, and Billy knows all about everything."
+
+"I can't understand you, a sensible girl, listening to such nonsense,"
+said Peter.  "It's that that troubles me."
+
+"Dad, where are your wits?" demanded Tommy.  "Isn't Billy acting like a
+brick?  Why, he could go into Fleet Street to half a dozen other papers
+and make five hundred a year as advertising-agent--you know he could.  But
+he doesn't.  He sticks to us.  If my making myself ridiculous with that
+tin pot they persuaded him was a piano is going to please him, isn't it
+common sense and sound business, to say nothing of good nature and
+gratitude, for me to do it?  Dad, I've got a surprise for him.  Listen."
+And Tommy, springing from the arm of Peter's chair, returned to the
+piano.
+
+"What was it?" questioned Tommy, having finished.  "Could you recognise
+it?"
+
+"I think," said Peter, "it sounded like--It wasn't 'Home, Sweet Home,'
+was it?"
+
+Tommy clapped her hands.  "Yes, it was.  You'll end by liking it
+yourself, dad.  We'll have musical 'At Homes.'"
+
+"Tommy, have I brought you up properly, do you think?"
+
+"No dad, you haven't.  You have let me have my own way too much.  You
+know the proverb: 'Good mothers make bad daughters.'  Clodd's right;
+you've spoilt me, dad.  Do you remember, dad, when I first came to you,
+seven years ago, a ragged little brat out of the streets, that didn't
+know itself whether 'twas a boy or a girl?  Do you know what I thought to
+myself the moment I set eyes on you?  'Here's a soft old juggins; I'll be
+all right if I can get in here!'  It makes you smart, knocking about in
+the gutters and being knocked about; you read faces quickly."
+
+"Do you remember your cooking, Tommy?  You 'had an aptitude for it,'
+according to your own idea."
+
+Tommy laughed.  "I wonder how you stood it."
+
+"You were so obstinate.  You came to me as 'cook and housekeeper,' and as
+cook and housekeeper, and as nothing else, would you remain.  If I
+suggested any change, up would go your chin into the air.  I dared not
+even dine out too often, you were such a little tyrant.  The only thing
+you were always ready to do, if I wasn't satisfied, was to march out of
+the house and leave me.  Wherever did you get that savage independence of
+yours?"
+
+"I don't know.  I think it must have been from a woman--perhaps she was
+my mother; I don't know--who used to sit up in the bed and cough, all
+night it seemed to me.  People would come to see us--ladies in fine
+clothes, and gentlemen with oily hair.  I think they wanted to help us.
+Many of them had kind voices.  But always a hard look would come into her
+face, and she would tell them what even then I knew to be untrue--it was
+one of the first things I can recollect--that we had everything we
+wanted, that we needed no help from anyone.  They would go away,
+shrugging their shoulders.  I grew up with the feeling that seemed to
+have been burnt into my brain, that to take from anybody anything you had
+not earned was shameful.  I don't think I could do it even now, not even
+from you.  I am useful to you, dad--I do help you?"
+
+There had crept a terror into Tommy's voice.  Peter felt the little hands
+upon his arm trembling.
+
+"Help me?  Why, you work like a nigger--like a nigger is supposed to
+work, but doesn't.  No one--whatever we paid him--would do half as much.
+I don't want to make your head more swollen than it is, young woman, but
+you have talent; I am not sure it is not genius."  Peter felt the little
+hands tighten upon his arm.
+
+"I do want this paper to be a success; that is why I strum upon the piano
+to please Clodd.  Is it humbug?"
+
+"I am afraid it is; but humbug is the sweet oil that helps this whirling
+world of ours to spin round smoothly.  Too much of it cloys: we drop it
+very gently."
+
+"But you are sure it is only humbug, Tommy?"  It was Peter's voice into
+which fear had entered now.  "It is not that you think he understands you
+better than I do--would do more for you?"
+
+"You want me to tell you all I think of you, and that isn't good for you,
+dad--not too often.  It would be you who would have swelled head then."
+
+"I am jealous, Tommy, jealous of everyone that comes near you.  Life is a
+tragedy for us old folks.  We know there must come a day when you will
+leave the nest, leave us voiceless, ridiculous, flitting among bare
+branches.  You will understand later, when you have children of your own.
+This foolish talk about a husband!  It is worse for a man than it is for
+the woman.  The mother lives again in her child: the man is robbed of
+all."
+
+"Dad, do you know how old I am?--that you are talking terrible nonsense?"
+
+"He will come, little girl."
+
+"Yes," answered Tommy, "I suppose he will; but not for a long while--oh,
+not for a very long while.  Don't.  It frightens me."
+
+"You?  Why should it frighten you?"
+
+"The pain.  It makes me feel a coward.  I want it to come; I want to
+taste life, to drain the whole cup, to understand, to feel.  But that is
+the boy in me.  I am more than half a boy, I always have been.  But the
+woman in me: it shrinks from the ordeal."
+
+"You talk, Tommy, as if love were something terrible."
+
+"There are all things in it; I feel it, dad.  It is life in a single
+draught.  It frightens me."
+
+The child was standing with her face hidden behind her hands.  Old Peter,
+always very bad at lying, stood silent, not knowing what consolation to
+concoct.  The shadow passed, and Tommy's laughing eyes looked out again.
+
+"Haven't you anything to do, dad--outside, I mean?"
+
+"You want to get rid of me?"
+
+"Well, I've nothing else to occupy me till the proofs come in.  I'm going
+to practise, hard."
+
+"I think I'll turn over my article on the Embankment," said Peter.
+
+"There's one thing you all of you ought to be grateful to me for,"
+laughed Tommy, as she seated herself at the piano.  "I do induce you all
+to take more fresh air than otherwise you would."
+
+Tommy, left alone, set herself to her task with the energy and
+thoroughness that were characteristic of her.  Struggling with
+complicated scales, Tommy bent her eyes closer and closer over the pages
+of _Czerny's Exercises_.  Glancing up to turn a page, Tommy, to her
+surprise, met the eyes of a stranger.  They were brown eyes, their
+expression sympathetic.  Below them, looking golden with the sunlight
+falling on it, was a moustache and beard cut short in Vandyke fashion,
+not altogether hiding a pleasant mouth, about the corners of which lurked
+a smile.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the stranger.  "I knocked three times.  Perhaps
+you did not hear me?"
+
+"No, I didn't," confessed Tommy, closing the book of _Czerny's
+Exercises_, and rising with chin at an angle that, to anyone acquainted
+with the chart of Tommy's temperament, might have suggested the
+advisability of seeking shelter.
+
+"This is the editorial office of _Good Humour_, is it not?" inquired the
+stranger.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Is the editor in?"
+
+"The editor is out."
+
+"The sub-editor?" suggested the stranger.
+
+"I am the sub-editor."
+
+The stranger raised his eyebrows.  Tommy, on the contrary, lowered hers.
+
+"Would you mind glancing through that?"  The stranger drew from his
+pocket a folded manuscript.  "It will not take you a moment.  I ought, of
+course, to have sent it through the post; but I am so tired of sending
+things through the post."
+
+The stranger's manner was compounded of dignified impudence combined with
+pathetic humility.  His eyes both challenged and pleaded.  Tommy held out
+her hand for the paper and retired with it behind the protection of the
+big editorial desk that, flanked on one side by a screen and on the other
+by a formidable revolving bookcase, stretched fortress-like across the
+narrow room.  The stranger remained standing.
+
+"Yes.  It's pretty," criticised the sub-editor.  "Worth printing,
+perhaps, not worth paying for."
+
+"Not merely a--a nominal sum, sufficient to distinguish it from the work
+of the amateur?"
+
+Tommy pursed her lips.  "Poetry is quite a drug in the market.  We can
+get as much as we want of it for nothing."
+
+"Say half a crown," suggested the stranger.
+
+Tommy shot a swift glance across the desk, and for the first time saw the
+whole of him.  He was clad in a threadbare, long, brown ulster--long,
+that is, it would have been upon an ordinary man, but the stranger
+happening to be remarkably tall, it appeared on him ridiculously short,
+reaching only to his knees.  Round his neck and tucked into his
+waistcoat, thus completely hiding the shirt and collar he may have been
+wearing or may not, was carefully arranged a blue silk muffler.  His
+hands, which were bare, looked blue and cold.  Yet the black frock-coat
+and waistcoat and French grey trousers bore the unmistakable cut of a
+first-class tailor and fitted him to perfection.  His hat, which he had
+rested on the desk, shone resplendent, and the handle of his silk
+umbrella was an eagle's head in gold, with two small rubies for the eyes.
+
+"You can leave it if you like," consented Tommy.  "I'll speak to the
+editor about it when he returns."
+
+"You won't forget it?" urged the stranger.
+
+"No," answered Tommy.  "I shall not forget it."
+
+Her black eyes were fixed upon the stranger without her being aware of
+it.  She had dropped unconsciously into her "stocktaking" attitude.
+
+"Thank you very much," said the stranger.  "I will call again to-morrow."
+
+The stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.
+
+Tommy sat with her face between her hands.  _Czerny's Exercises_ lay
+neglected.
+
+"Anybody called?" asked Peter Hope.
+
+"No," answered Tommy.  "Oh, just a man.  Left this--not bad."
+
+"The old story," mused Peter, as he unfolded the manuscript.  "We all of
+us begin with poetry.  Then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn't
+pay.  Finally, we write articles: 'How to be Happy though Married,' 'What
+shall we do with our Daughters?'  It is life summarised.  What is it all
+about?"
+
+"Oh, the usual sort of thing," explained Tommy.  "He wants half a crown
+for it."
+
+"Poor devil!  Let him have it."
+
+"That's not business," growled Tommy.
+
+"Nobody will ever know," said Peter.  "We'll enter it as 'telegrams.'"
+
+The stranger called early the next day, pocketed his half-crown, and left
+another manuscript--an essay.  Also he left behind him his gold-handled
+umbrella, taking away with him instead an old alpaca thing Clodd kept in
+reserve for exceptionally dirty weather.  Peter pronounced the essay
+usable.
+
+"He has a style," said Peter; "he writes with distinction.  Make an
+appointment for me with him."
+
+Clodd, on missing his umbrella, was indignant.
+
+"What's the good of this thing to me?" commented Clodd.  "Sort of thing
+for a dude in a pantomime!  The fellow must be a blithering ass!"
+
+Tommy gave to the stranger messages from both when next he called.  He
+appeared more grieved than surprised concerning the umbrellas.
+
+"You don't think Mr. Clodd would like to keep this umbrella in exchange
+for his own?" he suggested.
+
+"Hardly his style," explained Tommy.
+
+"It's very peculiar," said the stranger, with a smile.  "I have been
+trying to get rid of this umbrella for the last three weeks.  Once upon a
+time, when I preferred to keep my own umbrella, people used to take it by
+mistake, leaving all kinds of shabby things behind them in exchange.  Now,
+when I'd really like to get quit of it, nobody will have it."
+
+"Why do you want to get rid of it?" asked Tommy.  "It looks a very good
+umbrella."
+
+"You don't know how it hampers me," said the stranger.  "I have to live
+up to it.  It requires a certain amount of resolution to enter a cheap
+restaurant accompanied by that umbrella.  When I do, the waiters draw my
+attention to the most expensive dishes and recommend me special brands of
+their so-called champagne.  They seem quite surprised if I only want a
+chop and a glass of beer.  I haven't always got the courage to disappoint
+them.  It is really becoming quite a curse to me.  If I use it to stop a
+'bus, three or four hansoms dash up and quarrel over me.  I can't do
+anything I want to do.  I want to live simply and inexpensively: it will
+not let me."
+
+Tommy laughed.  "Can't you lose it?"
+
+The stranger laughed also.  "Lose it!  You have no idea how honest people
+are.  I hadn't myself.  The whole world has gone up in my estimation
+within the last few weeks.  People run after me for quite long distances
+and force it into my hand--people on rainy days who haven't got umbrellas
+of their own.  It is the same with this hat."  The stranger sighed as he
+took it up.  "I am always trying to get _off_ with something reasonably
+shabby in exchange for it.  I am always found out and stopped."
+
+"Why don't you pawn them?" suggested the practicable Tommy.
+
+The stranger regarded her with admiration.
+
+"Do you know, I never thought of that," said the stranger.  "Of course.
+What a good idea!  Thank you so much."
+
+The stranger departed, evidently much relieved.
+
+"Silly fellow," mused Tommy.  "They won't give him a quarter of the
+value, and he will say: 'Thank you so much,' and be quite contented."  It
+worried Tommy a good deal that day, the thought of that stranger's
+helplessness.
+
+The stranger's name was Richard Danvers.  He lived the other side of
+Holborn, in Featherstone Buildings, but much of his time came to be spent
+in the offices of _Good Humour_.
+
+Peter liked him.  "Full of promise," was Peter's opinion.  "His criticism
+of that article of mine on 'The Education of Woman' showed both sense and
+feeling.  A scholar and a thinker."
+
+Flipp, the office-boy (spelt Philip), liked him; and Flipp's attitude, in
+general, was censorial.  "He's all right," pronounced Flipp; "nothing
+stuck-up about him.  He's got plenty of sense, lying hidden away."
+
+Miss Ramsbotham liked him.  "The men--the men we think about at all,"
+explained Miss Ramsbotham--"may be divided into two classes: the men we
+ought to like, but don't; and the men there is no particular reason for
+our liking, but that we do.  Personally I could get very fond of your
+friend Dick.  There is nothing whatever attractive about him except
+himself."
+
+Even Tommy liked him in her way, though at times she was severe with him.
+
+"If you mean a big street," grumbled Tommy, who was going over proofs,
+"why not say a big street?  Why must you always call it a 'main artery'?"
+
+"I am sorry," apologised Danvers.  "It is not my own idea.  You told me
+to study the higher-class journals."
+
+"I didn't tell you to select and follow all their faults.  Here it is
+again.  Your crowd is always a 'hydra-headed monster'; your tea 'the cup
+that cheers but not inebriates.'"
+
+"I am afraid I am a deal of trouble to you," suggested the staff.
+
+"I am afraid you are," agreed the sub-editor.
+
+"Don't give me up," pleaded the staff.  "I misunderstood you, that is
+all.  I will write English for the future."
+
+"Shall be glad if you will," growled the sub-editor.
+
+Dick Danvers rose.  "I am so anxious not to get what you call 'the sack'
+from here."
+
+The sub-editor, mollified, thought the staff need be under no
+apprehension, provided it showed itself teachable.
+
+"I have been rather a worthless fellow, Miss Hope," confessed Dick
+Danvers.  "I was beginning to despair of myself till I came across you
+and your father.  The atmosphere here--I don't mean the material
+atmosphere of Crane Court--is so invigorating: its simplicity, its
+sincerity.  I used to have ideals.  I tried to stifle them.  There is a
+set that sneers at all that sort of thing.  Now I see that they are good.
+You will help me?"
+
+Every woman is a mother.  Tommy felt for the moment that she wanted to
+take this big boy on her knee and talk to him for his good.  He was only
+an overgrown lad.  But so exceedingly overgrown!  Tommy had to content
+herself with holding out her hand.  Dick Danvers grasped it tightly.
+
+Clodd was the only one who did not approve of him.
+
+"How did you get hold of him?" asked Clodd one afternoon, he and Peter
+alone in the office.
+
+"He came.  He came in the usual way," explained Peter.
+
+"What do you know about him?"
+
+"Nothing.  What is there to know?  One doesn't ask for a character with a
+journalist."
+
+"No, I suppose that wouldn't work.  Found out anything about him since?"
+
+"Nothing against him.  Why so suspicious of everybody?"
+
+"Because you are just a woolly lamb and want a dog to look after you.  Who
+is he?  On a first night he gives away his stall and sneaks into the pit.
+When you send him to a picture-gallery, he dodges the private view and
+goes on the first shilling day.  If an invitation comes to a public
+dinner, he asks me to go and eat it for him and tell him what it's all
+about.  That doesn't suggest the frank and honest journalist, does it?"
+
+"It is unusual, it certainly is unusual," Peter was bound to admit.
+
+"I distrust the man," said Clodd.  "He's not our class.  What is he doing
+here?"
+
+"I will ask him, Clodd; I will ask him straight out."
+
+"And believe whatever he tells you."
+
+"No, I shan't."
+
+"Then what's the good of asking him?"
+
+"Well, what am I to do?" demanded the bewildered Peter.
+
+"Get rid of him," suggested Clodd.
+
+"Get rid of him?"
+
+"Get him away!  Don't have him in and out of the office all day
+long-looking at her with those collie-dog eyes of his, arguing art and
+poetry with her in that cushat-dove voice of his.  Get him clean away--if
+it isn't too late already."
+
+"Nonsense," said Peter, who had turned white, however.  "She's not that
+sort of girl."
+
+"Not that sort of girl!"  Clodd had no patience with Peter Hope, and told
+him so.  "Why are there never inkstains on her fingers now?  There used
+to be.  Why does she always keep a lemon in her drawer?  When did she
+last have her hair cut?  I'll tell you if you care to know--the week
+before he came, five months ago.  She used to have it cut once a
+fortnight: said it tickled her neck.  Why does she jump on people when
+they call her Tommy and tell them that her name is Jane?  It never used
+to be Jane.  Maybe when you're a bit older you'll begin to notice things
+for yourself."
+
+Clodd jammed his hat on his head and flung himself down the stairs.
+
+Peter, slipping out a minute later, bought himself an ounce of snuff.
+
+"Fiddle-de-dee!" said Peter as he helped himself to his thirteenth pinch.
+"Don't believe it.  I'll sound her.  I shan't say a word--I'll just sound
+her."
+
+Peter stood with his back to the fire.  Tommy sat at her desk, correcting
+proofs of a fanciful story: _The Man Without a Past_.
+
+"I shall miss him," said Peter; "I know I shall."
+
+"Miss whom?" demanded Tommy.
+
+"Danvers," sighed Peter.  "It always happens so.  You get friendly with a
+man; then he goes away--abroad, back to America, Lord knows where.  You
+never see him again."
+
+Tommy looked up.  There was trouble in her face.
+
+"How do you spell 'harassed'?" questioned Tommy! "two r's or one."
+
+"One r," Peter informed her, "two s's."
+
+"I thought so."  The trouble passed from Tommy's face.
+
+"You don't ask when he's going, you don't ask where he's going,"
+complained Peter.  "You don't seem to be interested in the least."
+
+"I was going to ask, so soon as I had finished correcting this sheet,"
+explained Tommy.  "What reason does he give?"
+
+Peter had crossed over and was standing where he could see her face
+illumined by the lamplight.
+
+"It doesn't upset you--the thought of his going away, of your never
+seeing him again?"
+
+"Why should it?"  Tommy answered his searching gaze with a slightly
+puzzled look.  "Of course, I'm sorry.  He was becoming useful.  But we
+couldn't expect him to stop with us always, could we?"
+
+Peter, rubbing his hands, broke into a chuckle.  "I told him 'twas all
+fiddlesticks.  Clodd, he would have it you were growing to care for the
+fellow."
+
+"For Dick Danvers?" Tommy laughed.  "Whatever put that into his head?"
+
+"Oh, well, there were one or two little things that we had noticed."
+
+"We?"
+
+"I mean that Clodd had noticed."
+
+I'm glad it was Clodd that noticed them, not you, dad, thought Tommy to
+herself.  They'd have been pretty obvious if you had noticed them.
+
+"It naturally made me anxious," confessed Peter.  "You see, we know
+absolutely nothing of the fellow."
+
+"Absolutely nothing," agreed Tommy.
+
+"He may be a man of the highest integrity.  Personally, I think he is.  I
+like him.  On the other hand, he may be a thorough-paced scoundrel.  I
+don't believe for a moment that he is, but he may be.  Impossible to
+say."
+
+"Quite impossible," agreed Tommy.
+
+"Considered merely as a journalist, it doesn't matter.  He writes well.
+He has brains.  There's an end of it."
+
+"He is very painstaking," agreed Tommy.
+
+"Personally," added Peter, "I like the fellow."  Tommy had returned to
+her work.
+
+Of what use was Peter in a crisis of this kind?  Peter couldn't scold.
+Peter couldn't bully.  The only person to talk to Tommy as Tommy knew she
+needed to be talked to was one Jane, a young woman of dignity with sense
+of the proprieties.
+
+"I do hope that at least you are feeling ashamed of yourself," remarked
+Jane to Tommy that same night, as the twain sat together in their little
+bedroom.
+
+"Done nothing to be ashamed of," growled Tommy.
+
+"Making a fool of yourself openly, for everybody to notice."
+
+"Clodd ain't everybody.  He's got eyes at the back of his head.  Sees
+things before they happen."
+
+"Where's your woman's pride: falling in love with a man who has never
+spoken to you, except in terms of the most ordinary courtesy."
+
+"I'm not in love with him."
+
+"A man about whom you know absolutely nothing."
+
+"Not in love with him."
+
+"Where does he come from?  Who is he?"
+
+"I don't know, don't care; nothing to do with me."
+
+"Just because of his soft eyes, and his wheedling voice, and that half-
+caressing, half-devotional manner of his.  Do you imagine he keeps it
+specially for you?  I gave you credit for more sense."
+
+"I'm not in love with him, I tell you.  He's down on his luck, and I'm
+sorry for him, that's all."
+
+"And if he is, whose fault was it, do you think?"
+
+"It doesn't matter.  We are none of us saints.  He's trying to pull
+himself together, and I respect him for it.  It's our duty to be
+charitable and kind to one another in this world!"
+
+"Oh, well, I'll tell you how you can be kind to him: by pointing out to
+him that he is wasting his time.  With his talents, now that he knows his
+business, he could be on the staff of some big paper, earning a good
+income.  Put it nicely to him, but be firm.  Insist on his going.  That
+will be showing true kindness to him--and to yourself, too, I'm thinking,
+my dear."
+
+And Tommy understood and appreciated the sound good sense underlying
+Jane's advice, and the very next day but one, seizing the first
+opportunity, acted upon it; and all would have gone as contemplated if
+only Dick Danvers had sat still and listened, as it had been arranged in
+Tommy's programme that he should.
+
+"But I don't want to go," said Dick.
+
+"But you ought to want to go.  Staying here with us you are doing
+yourself no good."
+
+He rose and came to where she stood with one foot upon the fender,
+looking down into the fire.  His doing this disconcerted her.  So long as
+he remained seated at the other end of the room, she was the sub-editor,
+counselling the staff for its own good.  Now that she could not raise her
+eyes without encountering his, she felt painfully conscious of being
+nothing more important than a little woman who was trembling.
+
+"It is doing me all the good in the world," he told her, "being near to
+you."
+
+"Oh, please do sit down again," she urged him.  "I can talk to you so
+much better when you're sitting down."
+
+But he would not do anything he should have done that day.  Instead he
+took her hands in his, and would not let them go; and the reason and the
+will went out of her, leaving her helpless.
+
+"Let me be with you always," he pleaded.  "It means the difference
+between light and darkness to me.  You have done so much for me.  Will
+you not finish your work?  Will you not trust me?  It is no hot passion
+that can pass away, my love for you.  It springs from all that is best in
+me--from the part of me that is wholesome and joyous and strong, the part
+of me that belongs to you."
+
+Releasing her, he turned away.
+
+"The other part of me--the blackguard--it is dead, dear,--dead and
+buried.  I did not know I was a blackguard, I thought myself a fine
+fellow, till one day it came home to me.  Suddenly I saw myself as I
+really was.  And the sight of the thing frightened me and I ran away from
+it.  I said to myself I would begin life afresh, in a new country, free
+of every tie that could bind me to the past.  It would mean
+poverty--privation, maybe, in the beginning.  What of that?  The struggle
+would brace me.  It would be good sport.  Ah, well, you can guess the
+result: the awakening to the cold facts, the reaction of feeling.  In
+what way was I worse than other men?  Who was I, to play the prig in a
+world where others were laughing and dining?  I had tramped your city
+till my boots were worn into holes.  I had but to abandon my quixotic
+ideals--return to where shame lay waiting for me, to be welcomed with the
+fatted calf.  It would have ended so had I not chanced to pass by your
+door that afternoon and hear you strumming on the piano."
+
+So Billy was right, after all, thought Tommy to herself, the piano does
+help.
+
+"It was so incongruous--a piano in Crane Court--I looked to see where the
+noise came from.  I read the name of the paper on the doorpost.  'It will
+be my last chance,' I said to myself.  'This shall decide it.'"
+
+He came back to her.  She had not moved.  "I am not afraid to tell you
+all this.  You are so big-hearted, so human; you will understand, you can
+forgive.  It is all past.  Loving you tells a man that he has done with
+evil.  Will you not trust me?"
+
+She put her hands in his.  "I am trusting you," she said, "with all my
+life.  Don't make a muddle of it, dear, if you can help it."
+
+It was an odd wooing, as Tommy laughingly told herself when she came to
+think it over in her room that night.  But that is how it shaped itself.
+
+What troubled her most was that he had not been quite frank with Peter,
+so that Peter had to defend her against herself.
+
+"I attacked you so suddenly," explained Peter, "you had not time to
+think.  You acted from instinct.  A woman seeks to hide her love even
+from herself."
+
+"I expect, after all, I am more of a girl than a boy," feared Tommy: "I
+seem to have so many womanish failings."
+
+Peter took himself into quite places and trained himself to face the fact
+that another would be more to her than he had ever been, and Clodd went
+about his work like a bear with a sore head; but they neither of them
+need have troubled themselves so much.  The marriage did not take place
+till nearly fifteen years had passed away, and much water had to flow
+beneath old London Bridge before that day.
+
+The past is not easily got rid of.  A tale was once written of a woman
+who killed her babe and buried it in a lonely wood, and later stole back
+in the night and saw there, white in the moonlight, a child's hand
+calling through the earth, and buried it again and yet again; but always
+that white baby hand called upwards through the earth, trample it down as
+she would.  Tommy read the story one evening in an old miscellany, and
+sat long before the dead fire, the book open on her lap, and shivered;
+for now she knew the fear that had been haunting her.
+
+Tommy lived expecting her.  She came one night when Tommy was alone,
+working late in the office.  Tommy knew her the moment she entered the
+door, a handsome woman, with snake-like, rustling skirts.  She closed the
+door behind her, and drawing forward a chair, seated herself the other
+side of the desk, and the two looked long and anxiously at one another.
+
+"They told me I should find you here alone," said the woman.  "It is
+better, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Tommy, "it is better."
+
+"Tell me," said the woman, "are you very much in love with him?"
+
+"Why should I tell you?"
+
+"Because, if not--if you have merely accepted him thinking him a good
+catch--which he isn't, my dear; hasn't a penny to bless himself with, and
+never will if he marries you--why, then the matter is soon settled.  They
+tell me you are a business-like young lady, and I am prepared to make a
+business-like proposition."
+
+There was no answer.  The woman shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"If, on the other hand, you are that absurd creature, a young girl in
+love--why, then, I suppose we shall have to fight for him."
+
+"It would be more sporting, would it not?" suggested Tommy.
+
+"Let me explain before you decide," continued the woman.  "Dick Danvers
+left me six months ago, and has kept from me ever since, because he loved
+me."
+
+"It sounds a curious reason."
+
+"I was a married woman when Dick Danvers and I first met.  Since he left
+me--for my sake and his own--I have received information of my husband's
+death."
+
+"And does Dick--does he know?" asked the girl.
+
+"Not yet.  I have only lately learnt the news myself."
+
+"Then if it is as you say, when he knows he will go back to you."
+
+"There are difficulties in the way."
+
+"What difficulties?"
+
+"My dear, this.  To try and forget me, he has been making love to you.
+Men do these things.  I merely ask you to convince yourself of the truth.
+Go away for six months--disappear entirely.  Leave him free--uninfluenced.
+If he loves you--if it be not merely a sense of honour that binds him--you
+will find him here on your return.  If not--if in the interval I have
+succeeded in running off with him, well, is not the two or three thousand
+pounds I am prepared to put into this paper of yours a fair price for
+such a lover?"
+
+Tommy rose with a laugh of genuine amusement.  She could never altogether
+put aside her sense of humour, let Fate come with what terrifying face it
+would.
+
+"You may have him for nothing--if he is that man," the girl told her; "he
+shall be free to choose between us."
+
+"You mean you will release him from his engagement?"
+
+"That is what I mean."
+
+"Why not take my offer?  You know the money is needed.  It will save your
+father years of anxiety and struggle.  Go away--travel, for a couple of
+months, if you're afraid of the six.  Write him that you must be alone,
+to think things over."
+
+The girl turned upon her.
+
+"And leave you a free field to lie and trick?"
+
+The woman, too, had risen.  "Do you think he really cares for you?  At
+the moment you interest him.  At nineteen every woman is a mystery.  When
+the mood is past--and do you know how long a man's mood lasts, you poor
+chit?  Till he has caught what he is running after, and has tasted
+it--then he will think not of what he has won, but of what he has lost:
+of the society from which he has cut himself adrift; of all the old
+pleasures and pursuits he can no longer enjoy; of the
+luxuries--necessities to a man of his stamp--that marriage with you has
+deprived him of.  Then your face will be a perpetual reminder to him of
+what he has paid for it, and he will curse it every time he sees it."
+
+"You don't know him," the girl cried.  "You know just a part of him--the
+part you would know.  All the rest of him is a good man, that would
+rather his self-respect than all the luxuries you mention--you included."
+
+"It seems to resolve itself into what manner of man he is," laughed the
+woman.
+
+The girl looked at her watch.  "He will be here shortly; he shall tell us
+himself."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"That here, between the two of us, he shall decide--this very night."  She
+showed her white face to the woman.  "Do you think I could live through a
+second day like to this?"
+
+"The scene would be ridiculous."
+
+"There will be none here to enjoy the humour of it."
+
+"He will not understand."
+
+"Oh, yes, he will," the girl laughed.  "Come, you have all the
+advantages; you are rich, you are clever; you belong to his class.  If he
+elects to stop with me, it will be because he is my man--mine.  Are you
+afraid?"
+
+The woman shivered.  She wrapped her fur cloak about her closer and sat
+down again, and Tommy returned to her proofs.  It was press-night, and
+there was much to be done.
+
+He came a little later, though how long the time may have seemed to the
+two women one cannot say.  They heard his footstep on the stair.  The
+woman rose and went forward, so that when he opened the door she was the
+first he saw.  But he made no sign.  Possibly he had been schooling
+himself for this moment, knowing that sooner or later it must come.  The
+woman held out her hand to him with a smile.
+
+"I have not the honour," he said.
+
+The smile died from her face.  "I do not understand," she said.
+
+"I have not the honour," he repeated.  "I do not know you."
+
+The girl was leaning with her back against the desk in a somewhat mannish
+attitude.  He stood between them.  It will always remain Life's chief
+comic success: the man between two women.  The situation has amused the
+world for so many years.  Yet, somehow, he contrived to maintain a
+certain dignity.
+
+"Maybe," he continued, "you are confounding me with a Dick Danvers who
+lived in New York up to a few months ago.  I knew him well--a worthless
+scamp you had done better never to have met."
+
+"You bear a wonderful resemblance to him," laughed the woman.
+
+"The poor fool is dead," he answered.  "And he left for you, my dear
+lady, this dying message: that, from the bottom of his soul, he was sorry
+for the wrong he had done you.  He asked you to forgive him--and forget
+him."
+
+"The year appears to be opening unfortunately for me," said the woman.
+"First my lover, then my husband."
+
+He had nerved himself to fight the living.  This was a blow from the
+dead.  The man had been his friend.
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"He was killed, it appears, in that last expedition in July," answered
+the woman.  "I received the news from the Foreign Office only a fortnight
+ago."
+
+An ugly look came into his eyes--the look of a cornered creature fighting
+for its life.  "Why have you followed me here?  Why do I find you here
+alone with her?  What have you told her?"
+
+The woman shrugged her shoulders.  "Only the truth."
+
+"All the truth?" he demanded--"all?  Ah! be just.  Tell her it was not
+all my fault.  Tell her all the truth."
+
+"What would you have me tell her?  That I played Potiphar's wife to your
+Joseph?"
+
+"Ah, no!  The truth--only the truth.  That you and I were a pair of idle
+fools with the devil dancing round us.  That we played a fool's game, and
+that it is over."
+
+"Is it over?  Dick, is it over?"  She flung her arms towards him; but he
+threw her from him almost brutally.  "The man is dead, I tell you.  His
+folly and his sin lie dead with him.  I have nothing to do with you, nor
+you with me."
+
+"Dick!" she whispered.  "Dick, cannot you understand?  I must speak with
+you alone."
+
+But they did not understand, neither the man nor the child.
+
+"Dick, are you really dead?" she cried.  "Have you no pity for me?  Do
+you think that I have followed you here to grovel at your feet for mere
+whim?  Am I acting like a woman sane and sound?  Don't you see that I am
+mad, and why I am mad?  Must I tell you before her?  Dick--"  She
+staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and
+then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a woman, and raised the
+other woman from the ground with crooning words of encouragement such as
+mothers use, and led her to the inner room.  "Do not go," she said,
+turning to Dick; "I shall be back in a few minutes."
+
+He crossed to one of the windows against which beat the City's roar, and
+it seemed to him as the throb of passing footsteps beating down through
+the darkness to where he lay in his grave.
+
+She re-entered, closing the door softly behind her.  "It is true?" she
+asked.
+
+"It can be.  I had not thought of it."
+
+They spoke in low, matter-of-fact tones, as people do who have grown
+weary of their own emotions.
+
+"When did he go away--her husband?"
+
+"About--it is February now, is it not?  About eighteen months ago."
+
+"And died just eight months ago.  Rather conveniently, poor fellow."
+
+"Yes, I'm glad he is dead--poor Lawrence."
+
+"What is the shortest time in which a marriage can be arranged?"
+
+"I do not know," he answered listlessly.  "I do not intend to marry her."
+
+"You would leave her to bear it alone?"
+
+"It is not as if she were a poor woman.  You can do anything with money."
+
+"It will not mend reputation.  Her position in society is everything to
+that class of woman."
+
+"My marrying her now," he pointed out, "would not save her."
+
+"Practically speaking it would," the girl pleaded.  "The world does not
+go out of its way to find out things it does not want to know.  Marry her
+as quietly as possible and travel for a year or two."
+
+"Why should I?  Ah! it is easy enough to call a man a coward for
+defending himself against a woman.  What is he to do when he is fighting
+for his life?  Men do not sin with good women."
+
+"There is the child to be considered," she urged--"your child.  You see,
+dear, we all do wrong sometimes.  We must not let others suffer for our
+fault more--more than we can help."
+
+He turned to her for the first time.  "And you?"
+
+"I?  Oh, I shall cry for a little while, but later on I shall laugh, as
+often.  Life is not all love.  I have my work."
+
+He knew her well by this time.  And also it came to him that it would be
+a finer thing to be worthy of her than even to possess her.
+
+So he did her bidding and went out with the other woman.  Tommy was glad
+it was press-night.  She would not be able to think for hours to come,
+and then, perhaps, she would be feeling too tired.  Work can be very
+kind.
+
+Were this an artistic story, here, of course, one would write "Finis."
+But in the workaday world one never knows the ending till it comes.  Had
+it been otherwise, I doubt I could have found courage to tell you this
+story of Tommy.  It is not all true--at least, I do not suppose so.  One
+drifts unconsciously a little way into dream-land when one sits oneself
+down to recall the happenings of long ago; while Fancy, with a sly wink,
+whispers ever and again to Memory: "Let me tell this incident--picture
+that scene: I can make it so much more interesting than you would."  But
+Tommy--how can I put it without saying too much: there is someone I think
+of when I speak of her?  To remember only her dear wounds, and not the
+healing of them, would have been a task too painful.  I love to dwell on
+their next meeting.  Flipp, passing him on the steps, did not know him,
+the tall, sunburnt gentleman with the sweet, grave-faced little girl.
+
+"Seen that face somewhere before," mused Flipp, as at the corner of
+Bedford Street he climbed into a hansom, "seen it somewhere on a thinner
+man."
+
+For Dick Danvers, that he did not recognise Flipp, there was more excuse.
+A very old young man had Flipp become at thirty.  Flipp no longer enjoyed
+popular journalism.  He produced it.
+
+The gold-bound doorkeeper feared the mighty Clodd would be unable to see
+so insignificant an atom as an unappointed stranger, but would let the
+card of Mr. Richard Danvers plead for itself.  To the gold-bound keeper's
+surprise came down the message that Mr. Danvers was to be at once shown
+up.
+
+"I thought, somehow, you would come to me first," said the portly Clodd,
+advancing with out-stretched hand.  "And this is--?"
+
+"My little girl, Honor.  We have been travelling for the last few
+months."
+
+Clodd took the grave, small face between his big, rough hands:
+
+"Yes.  She is like you.  But looks as if she were going to have more
+sense.  Forgive me, I knew your father my dear," laughed Clodd; "when he
+was younger."
+
+They lit their cigars and talked.
+
+"Well, not exactly dead; we amalgamated it," winked Clodd in answer to
+Danvers' inquiry.  "It was just a trifle _too_ high-class.  Besides, the
+old gentleman was not getting younger.  It hurt him a little at first.
+But then came Tommy's great success, and that has reconciled him to all
+things.  Do they know you are in England?"
+
+"No," explained Danvers; "we arrived only last night."
+
+Clodd called directions down the speaking-tube.
+
+"You will find hardly any change in her.  One still has to keep one's eye
+upon her chin.  She has not even lost her old habit of taking stock of
+people.  You remember."  Clodd laughed.
+
+They talked a little longer, till there came a whistle, and Clodd put his
+ear to the tube.
+
+"I have to see her on business," said Clodd, rising; "you may as well
+come with me.  They are still in the old place, Gough Square."
+
+Tommy was out, but Peter was expecting her every minute.
+
+Peter did not know Dick, but would not admit it.  Forgetfulness was a
+sign of age, and Peter still felt young.
+
+"I know your face quite well," said Peter; "can't put a name to it,
+that's all."
+
+Clodd whispered it to him, together with information bringing history up
+to date.  And then light fell upon the old lined face.  He came towards
+Dick, meaning to take him by both hands, but, perhaps because he had
+become somewhat feeble, he seemed glad when the younger man put his arms
+around him and held him for a moment.  It was un-English, and both of
+them felt a little ashamed of themselves afterwards.
+
+"What we want," said Clodd, addressing Peter, "we three--you, I, and Miss
+Danvers--is tea and cakes, with cream in them; and I know a shop where
+they sell them.  We will call back for your father in half an hour."
+Clodd explained to Miss Danvers; "he has to talk over a matter of
+business with Miss Hope."
+
+"I know," answered the grave-faced little person.  She drew Dick's face
+down to hers and kissed it.  And then the three went out together,
+leaving Dick standing by the window.
+
+"Couldn't we hide somewhere till she comes?" suggested Miss Danvers.  "I
+want to see her."
+
+So they waited in the open doorway of a near printing-house till Tommy
+drove up.  Both Peter and Clodd watched the child's face with some
+anxiety.  She nodded gravely to herself three times, then slipped her
+hand into Peter's.
+
+Tommy opened the door with her latchkey and passed in.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOMMY AND CO.***
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