On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a small bill with which I had been entrusted—we will call it the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"—and about four o'clock I handed it to Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair with Punch. (It was a Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still, happily, the Punch-day of these.)

Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things, come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon of Punch, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of my daughter inquire—

"Are you drefful busy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)

There was a sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's voice said—

"Come away, Philly!" (This is a favourite Scoticism of Robin's, and appears to be a term denoting hearty welcome.)

There was a delighted squeal and the sound of pattering feet. Next ensued a period of rather audible osculation, and then there was silence. Presently Phillis said—

"What shall we do? Shall I sing you a hymn?"

Evidently the revels were about to commence.

"I have just learned a new one," she continued. "I heared it in Church yesterday afternoon, so I brought it home and changed it a bit. It's called 'Onward, Chwistian Sailors!'"

"'Soldiers,' isn't it?"

"No—'Sailors.' It was 'Soldiers,' but I like sailors much better than soldiers, so I changed it. I'll sing it now."

"Wait till Sunday," said Robin, with much presence of mind. "Will you not tell me a story?"

This idea appeared so good that Phillis began forthwith.

"Once there were three horses what lived in a stable. Two was wise and one was just a foolish young horse. There was some wolves what lived quite near the stable——"

"Wolves?" said my secretary, in tones of mild surprise.

"The stable," explained Phillis, "stood in the midst of the snowy plains of Muscovy. I should have telled you that before."

"Just so," said Robin gravely. "Go on."

"Well, one day," continued the narratress's voice through the curtains—I knew the story by heart, so I was able to fill up the gaps for myself when she dropped to a confidential whisper—"one cold, windy, berleak day, the old wolves said to the young ones, 'How about a meal of meat?' and all the young one's said, 'Oh, let's!'

"That very morning," continued Phillis in the impressive bass which she reserves for the most exciting parts of her narrative, "that very morning the foolish young horse said to the old horses, 'Who is for a scamper to-day?' Then he began to wiggle and wiggle at his halter. The old horses said, 'There is wolves outside, and our master says that they eat all sheep an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled and wiggled,"—I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word upon her audience's knee,—"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels, and—what?"

Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded.

"Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl—a awful, fearful, deep growl,"—Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling and continuous gurgle—"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you——"

She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit.

"Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back, then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he died. Now you tell me one."

"Which?"

Phillis considered.

"The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."

Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together, Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I retired to my arm-chair.

"The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her. Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and faster until——"

"You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet going pad pad over the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously.

"So I did. I'm sorry. She could hear its webbed feet going pad pad over the slippery stanes. Presently though, she came to a wee bit housie on the moor. It was empty, but she slippit through the yard-gate and flew along the path and in at the door. The Kelpie came flying through the gate——"

"No, no—it loupit ower the dyke!" screamed Phillis, who would countenance no tamperings with the original text.

"Oh, yes. It loupit ower the dyke, but the wee lassie just slammed the door in its face, and turned the key. Then she felt round in the dark and keeked about, wondering what kind of place she was in. And at that very moment, through a bit window in the wall——"

"She went ben first."

"Oh, yes. She went ben; and at that very moment, through the bit window in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. The sun——"

"The sun had risen," declaimed Phillis, triumphantly taking up the tale; "and with one wild sheriek of disappointed rage the Kelpie vanished away, and the wee lassie was saved!"

There was a rapt pause after this exciting anecdote. Then Phillis remarked—

"Uncle Robin, let's write that story down, and then I can get people to read it to me."

"Why not write it down for yourself?"

"I can't write—much; and it ought to be writed in ink, and I—I am only allowed to use pencil," explained my daughter, not without a certain bitterness. "But I put the lead in my mouf," she added defiantly.

At this moment the door of my apartment was hurled open, and Gerald projected himself into the room. It was the evening before his return to school, and there was a predatory look in his eye. He was accompanied by his speechless friend.

"Adrian, old son," he began, in such tones as an orator might address to a refractory mob, "Moke and I are going to have a study next term, and we want some furniture."

I mildly remarked that in my day furniture was supplied by the school authorities.

"Yes, but I mean pictures and things. Can you give us one? We shall want something to go on that wall opposite the window, shan't we, Moke? The place where young Lee missed your head with the red-ink bottle. Have you got a picture handy, Adrian?"

I replied in the negative.

Gerald took not the slightest notice.

"It will have to be a pretty big one," he continued. "There is a good lot of red ink to cover. I have been taking a look round the house, and I must say the pictures you've got are a fairly mangy lot—aren't they, Moke?"

The gentleman addressed coughed deprecatingly, and looked at me as much as to say that, whatever he thought of my taste in art, he had eaten my salt and would refrain from criticism.

"There's one that might do, though," continued Gerald. "It's hanging in the billiard-room—a big steamer in a storm."

By this time Phillis and Robin had joined the conclave.

"I know," said Phillis, nodding her head; "a great beautiful boat in some waves. I should fink it was a friend of the Great Eastern's," she added, referring to an antiquated print of the early Victorian leviathan which hung in the nursery.

"We could take it for a term or two, anyhow," continued Gerald, "until we get something better. I'm expecting some really decent ones after summer. Ainslie major is leaving then, and he has promised to let me have some of his cheap. Then you can have yours back, Adrian. That's the scheme! Come on, Moke, we'll go and take it down now. Thanks very much, old chap" (to me). "I'll tell Kitty that you've let us. We can jab it off its hook with a billiard-cue, I should think, Moke. Come too, will you, Mr Fordyce? You can stand underneath and catch it, in case it comes down with a run. So long, Adrian!"

The whole pack of them swept from the room, leaving the door open.

When I looked in at the billiard-room on my way up to dress for dinner an hour later, nothing remained to mark the spot hitherto occupied by a signed and numbered proof of An Ocean Greyhound, by Michael Angelo Mahlstaff, A.R.A. (a wedding gift to my wife and myself from the artist), but the imprints of several hot hands on the wall, together with a series of parallel perpendicular scars, apparently inflicted by a full-sized harrow.

From which two chapters it will be gathered that Robert Chalmers Fordyce was a man capable, in his ordinary working-day, of playing many parts.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP.

I.

My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.

Of Robin's attitude towards that pair of charmers Kitty could make little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way—rather ostentatiously, I thought—and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave reticence—he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a public meeting—and made little attempt to bestow upon them the attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.

There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here," said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise, but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite impossible. What he wants is mothering."

And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life—the correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.

In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the world—that of old age.

All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder—he was not of the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity—but, evidently struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable adjunct—quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one day on our way down to the House—to a lady's morning walk.

What he really thought of it all I do not know. I have a kind of suspicion that deep down in his heart every Scot entertains a contempt for the volatile and frivolous English which is only equalled by that of the English for the nation to whom I once heard a Highland minister refer as "the giddy and godless French"; but Robin was not given to the revelation of his private thoughts. He seldom spoke of the Twins to me—he was a discusser of manners rather than men—but he once remarked that they were girls of widely different character. He entered into no further details, but I remember being struck by the observation at the time; for I had always regarded my sisters-in-law as being as identical in disposition as they were in appearance.

Still it was pretty to see Robin unbending to please the two girls, and to hear him say "No, really?" or "My word, what rot!" when you knew that his tongue was itching to cry, "Is that a fact?" or "Hoots!" or "Havers!" as the occasion demanded.

He also possessed the great and unique merit of not being ashamed to ask for guidance in a difficulty. I have known him pause before an unfamiliar dish at table and ask one of his preceptresses, in the frankest manner possible, whether the exigencies of the situation called for a spoon or a fork: and out of doors it was a perpetual joy to hear him whisper, on the approach of some one whom he thought might be a friend of ours, "Will I lift my hat?"

All that year Robin was my right hand. It was a long session; and as my Chief sat in the Upper House, much work in the way of answering questions and making statements fell upon me. We had a good working majority, but the Opposition were a united and well-organised body that year, and we had to rise early and go to bed late to keep their assaults at bay while proceeding with the programme of the session. Every afternoon, before I entered the House to take my place at question-time, my secretary insisted on taking me through the answers which he had prepared for my recitation; and we also discussed the line of action to be pursued if I were cornered by questions of the "arising-out-of-that-answer" order.

Personally, I loathed this part of the work—I am a departmentalist pure and simple—but Robin's eye used to glow with the light of battle as he rehearsed me in the undoubtedly telling counters with which I was to pulverise the foe.

"I would like fine," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and answer these questions for you."

"I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will some day."

Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard his teeth click suddenly together.

So the wind lay that way!



II.

During the next year my household was furnished with three surprises, Dilly contributing one and Robin two.

Robin's came first. One was his uncle, the other his book.

One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry, mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

"And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?"

I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added—

"My nephew, Robin."

I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and read—

Sir James Fordyce.

Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man, whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for.

We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile; while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer of high standing.

The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin.

"He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he said. "I could see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet—my brother John?"

I told him no.

"Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him hard and narrow,—after forty years of London I sometimes find him so myself,—but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he added unexpectedly—"Robin has told me that."

I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty.

"I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said.

"No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he is a more fortunate man than I."

The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.

"Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's only his uncle."

Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty material.

Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.

Then came Robin's second surprise—his book. It was a novel, and a very good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher, who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his bedroom fire.

However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book, and introduced Robin to the public.

Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in October, when a parcel of complimentary copies arrived from the publisher's, that we were apprised of the fact that we had been cherishing an author in our midst. Robin solemnly presented us with a copy apiece (which I thought handsome but extravagant), and also sent one to his parents, who, though I think they rather doubted the propriety of possessing a son who wrote novels at all, wrote back comparing it very favourably with The Pilgrim's Progress, the only other work of fiction with which they were acquainted.

The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side of journalism,—graphic and convincing, all this,—and contained a rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to the male rather than the female intellect.

The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book, less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.

But life is full of compensations. There was a dedication. It read:—

THIS BOOK

OWES ITS INCEPTION,

AND IS THEREFORE

DEDICATED,

TO

A CIRCUMSTANCE

OVER

WHOM

I HAVE NO CONTROL.

R. C. F.

Now it is obvious that in nine cases out of ten there is only one circumstance over whom a vigorous young man has no control, and this circumstance wears petticoats. Hitherto I had not seriously connected Robin with the tender passion, and this sudden intimation that the most serious-minded and ambitious of young men is not immune from the same rather startled me.

The female members of my establishment were pleasantly fluttered, though they were concerned less with the lady's existence than with her identity.

"Who do you think she is?" inquired Kitty of me, the first time the subject cropped up between us.

"Don't know, I'm sure," I murmured. I was smoking my post-prandial cigar at the time, at peace with all the world. "Never had the privilege of seeing his visiting-list."

"I wonder who she can be," continued my wife. "He—he hasn't said anything to you, has he, dear?" she inquired, in a tentative voice.

I slowly opened one of my hitherto closed eyes, and cocked it suspiciously at the diplomatist sitting opposite to me. (The Twins and Robin were out at the theatre.) Then, observing that she was stealthily regarding me through her eyelashes—a detestable trick which some women have—I solemnly agitated my eyelid some three or four times and gently closed it again.

"Has he confided any of his love affairs to you, I mean?" continued Kitty, quite unabashed.

"If you eat any more chocolates you will make yourself sick," I observed.

"Yes, dear," said my wife submissively, pushing away the bon-bon dish. "But has he?"

"Are you trying to pump me?"

"Oh, gracious, no! What would be the good? I only asked a plain question. You men are such creatures for screening each other, though, that it's never any use asking a man anything about another man."

"True for you. As a matter of fact, Robin has hardly said a word to me on the subject of women since first I met him."

Kitty thoughtfully cracked a filbert with her teeth—an unladylike habit about which I have often spoken to her—and said—

"What exciting chats you must have!" Then she added reflectively—

"I expect it's a girl in Scotland. A sort of Highland lassie, in a kilt, or whatever female Highlanders wear."

"Why should a novel about the Stock Exchange 'owe its inception' to a Highland lassie?"

Kitty took another filbert.

"That's 'vurry bright' of you, Adrian, as that American girl used to say. There's something in that. (Yes, I know you don't like it, dear, but I love doing it. I'll pour you out another glass of port. There!) But any idiotic excuse is good enough for a man in love. Has he ever been sentimental with you—quoted poetry, or anything?"

"N-no. Stop, though! He did once quote Burns to me, but that was a propos of poetry in general, not of love-making."

I remembered the incident well. Robin had picked up at a bookstall a copy of an early and quite valuable edition of Burns' poems. He had sat smoking with me in the library late the same night, turning over the pages of the tattered volume, and quoting bits, in broad vernacular, from "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Cottar's Saturday Night." Suddenly he began, almost to himself—

"O, my love is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June; My love is like a melody That's sweetly played in tune. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I——"

He broke off for a moment, and I remembered how he glowered ecstatically into the fire. Then he concluded—

"And I will love thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry."

"Man," he said, "that's fine! That's poetry. That's the real thing!"

I had agreed. It is no use arguing with a Scot about Burns. (I remember once being nearly dirked at a Caledonian Dinner because I ventured to remark that "before ye" was not in my opinion a good rhyme to "Loch Lomond.")

However, Kitty and I were unable to decide whether Robin's "bonnie lass" on that occasion had been a personality or an abstraction.

"Mightn't it be one of the Twins?" I remarked.

"Well, it might be," admitted Kitty judicially, "but he has kept it very close if it is. No," she continued more decidedly, "I don't think it can be. They are quite out of his line. Besides—it would be too absurd!"

It was not one Twin at any rate, for a fortnight later Dilly sprung upon us the third surprise of the series I have mentioned. She announced that she had decided to marry Dicky Lever.

There was, I suppose, nothing very surprising in that. Dicky had been in constant attendance upon the Twins for nearly two years, and had long since graduated into the ranks of the Good Sorts. The surprise to us—rather unreasonably, perhaps—lay in the fact of—

1. Dicky having definitely fixed upon a particular Twin to propose to;

2. That Twin having definitely selected Dicky out of the assortment at her command.

I was so accustomed to seeing my sisters-in-law compassed about by a cloud of young men who appeared to admire them both equally, and to whom they appeared to apportion their favours with indiscriminate camaraderie, that the idea of one admirer stealing a march on all the others seemed a little unfair, somehow.

As Dolly remarked, it would break up the firm horribly.

"You see," she confided to me rather plaintively, "Dilly will have no use for them now, and they'll have still less use for her—an engaged girl beside other girls is about as exciting as a tapioca-pudding at a Lord Mayor's Banquet—and they will only have me. That won't be half the fun."

"I should have thought that your fun would have been exactly doubled," I said.

"Not a bit. How like a man! Don't you see, the fun used to be in playing them backwards and forwards between our two selves—like ping-pong, you know! It was clinking!"

She sighed regretfully.

"Now I shall either have to avoid men or marry them," she concluded, vaguely but regretfully. "Before, if they got in the way, I could always volley them back to Dilly. Now—one can't play ping-pong all by oneself!"



III.

Dilly's engagement, as is usual under such circumstances, afforded my household many opportunities for airy badinage and innocent merriment.

Dolly always heralded her coming into the billiard-room, where the affianced pair had staked out a claim, by a cough of penetrating severity, and usually entered the room with her features obscured by an open umbrella. On several occasions, too, she impersonated her sister; and once, when Dicky was spending a week-end in the house, was only prevented by the fraction of a second from robbing that incensed damosel of her morning salute.

My share in the proceedings was limited to a single constrained interview with Dicky, at which, feeling extremely rude and inquisitive, I asked him the usual stereotyped questions about his income, prospects, and habits (most of which I knew only too well already), which, being satisfactorily answered, I rang the bell for the Tantalus, and thanked heaven that the Twins were not Triplets. I had indeed suggested that Dilly's nearest and most natural protector was her brother, Master Gerald, and that Dicky should apply not for my consent but his. This motion, however, was negatived without a division. I was sorry, for I think my brother-in-law would have shown himself worthy of the occasion.

My wife received the news of the engagement with all the enthusiasm usually exhibited by a Salvation lassie when a fresh convert is hustled forward to the "saved" bench, and henceforth divided her time between ordering Dilly's trousseau and giving tea-parties, at which the prospective bridegroom was produced and passed round, "as if," to use his own expression, "he were the newest thing in accordion-pleating."

As regards Robin's share in the event, I can only recall one incident. He had been away at Stoneleigh, the largest town in my constituency, on some party business, and when he returned home the engagement had been announced for nearly a week.

"I must go and offer my good wishes to Miss Dilly," he said, after hearing the news. "Do you know where she is, Mrs Inglethwaite?"

"I saw her upstairs a few minutes ago," said Kitty. "Come up, and we'll find her."

We were in the library at the time, and Kitty and Robin left the room together. The rest of the story my wife told me later.

"We went up," she said, "and looked into the drawing-room, where I had last seen Dilly. The room was nearly dark, but she was there, sitting curled up in front of the fire.

"'There she is,' I said. 'Go and say something nice.'

"Well, dear,"—Kitty's face assumed an air of impressive solemnity which makes her absurdly like her daughter—"he stood hesitating a moment, and then walked straight up to her and said—

"'Good afternoon! Can you tell me where your sister is? I want to offer her my good wishes on the great event.'

"It wasn't Dilly at all. It was Dolly! And he was able to distinguish between the two in that dim room. And I couldn't!"

"Oh," said I carelessly, "I expect he noticed she wasn't wearing an engagement-ring."

My wife looked at me and sighed, as over one who would spoil a romance for want of a ha'porth of sentiment. And yet I know she would have been quite scandalised if any one had hinted at tender passages between her sister and my secretary. Women are curious creatures.



CHAPTER EIGHT.

OF A PIT THAT WAS DIGGED, AND WHO FELL INTO IT.

Dicky Lever was a hearty and not particularly intellectual youth of the What ho! type (if you know what I mean). He was employed in some capacity in a Government office, but his livelihood was not entirely dependent on his exertions therein—which was, perhaps, fortunate, as his sole claim to distinction in his Department lay in the fact of his holding the record for the highest score at small cricket in the Junior Secretaries' room. He was a member of the Leander Club, a more than usually capable amateur actor, and a very good fellow all round.

The engagement was announced at the end of July, which is a busy time for this country's legislators. The session was drawing to a close, and we were passing Bills with a prodigality and despatch which provoked many not altogether undeserved gibes from a reptile Opposition Press concerning the devotion of his Majesty's Government to the worship of Saint Grouse.

One night I brought Champion home to dinner between the afternoon and evening sittings. At the latter he was to move the second reading of his "Municipal Co-ordination Bill," a measure which was intended to grapple with the chaos arising from the multitude of opposing or overlapping interests that controlled the domestic arrangements of the Londoner. An effort was to be made to bring all the Gas, Electricity, Water, Paving, and other corporations into some sort of line, and prevent them from getting into each other's way and adding to the expenses and inconvenience of the much-enduring ratepayer. It was a useful little Bill; but though everybody approved of it on principle, various powerful interests were at work against it, and its prospects of getting through Committee hung in the balance.

"Now, Mr Champion," said Dilly, who knew that a man always likes to be questioned about his work, especially by a pretty girl, "what will your Bill do for us? I have asked this person here,"—indicating her fiance,—"but he says parish-pump politics aren't in his department. He licks stamps at the Foreign Office," she added in explanation.

"Tell her, Champion," said Dicky. "Out of my line altogether. Takes me all my time to keep an eye on those Johnnies in the Concert of Europe."

"I will tell you one thing the Bill will do, Miss Dilly," said Champion, a little heavily. (Dolly once said of him, "He's awfully clever and able and all that, but he hasn't got a light hand for conversational pastry.") "How many times have you noticed the streets up about here this year?"

"Heaps," said Dilly.

"They have hardly ever been down," corroborated Dolly.

"Let me see," continued Dilly. "Our side of the Square was repaved in January. Directly after that they took it up again and did something to the drains."

"In March they opened it again to lay down an electric light main," said I.

"In April something burst," said Dolly, "and that meant more men with wigwams and braziers."

"And last month," concluded Dilly, "they took away the wood pavement and relaid the whole Square with some new patent asphalte, which smelt simply, oh——"

"Rotten!" supplied Gerald. (Have I mentioned that he had just arrived home for his summer holiday?)

"Well," said Champion, "the Bill would regulate that sort of thing. It would protect the streets from being torn up at will by any Company who happened to have business underneath them. As things are, practically any one may come along and hew holes anywhere he pleases."

"The police ought to stop it," said Kitty, who has a profound belief in the Force. (I am convinced that if Beelzebub himself were to enter the house at any time during my absence, Kitty would lure him into the dining-room with the sherry, and then telephone for a constable.)

"The police have no right," said Champion. "If a gas company choose to give notice that they intend on a certain day to come and burrow in a road, all the police can do is to divert the traffic, and make the gas company as comfortable as possible."

I was not following this conversation with any particular interest. Being expected to speak in favour of the Bill that night, I was undergoing the preliminary anguish which invariably attends my higher oratorical efforts. But I remember now that about this time Dilly suddenly turned to Dicky and whispered something in his ear. Then they both looked across the dinner-table at Robin, who nodded, as who should say, "I know fine what you whispered then." After that they all three laughed and looked down the table at Champion, who was still expatiating on the merits of his Bill.

I suppose anybody else would have divined what was in the wind, but I did not.

* * * * *

A week later we were treated to an all-night sitting. The Irishmen had been quiescent of late, but on this occasion they made amends for their temporary relaxation of patriotism by resolutely obstructing an Appropriation Bill, which had to pass through Committee that night (if John Bull was to have any ready cash at all during the next few months), and kept us replying to amendments and trotting through division-lobbies until six o'clock next morning.

Robin stayed on in attendance at the House most of the night, but about three o'clock I sent him home, with instructions to stay in bed till tea-time if he pleased. He had had a hard time lately.

I was walking homeward in the early sunshine, marvelling, as people who accidentally find themselves up early pharisaically do, at the fatuity of those who waste the best hours of the whole day in bed, and revelling in the near prospect of a bath and my breakfast, when on turning a corner I walked into a hand-cart which was standing across the pavement. It contained workmen's tools—picks, shovels, and the like. On the near side of the roadway a man was erecting one of those curious wigwam arrangements which screen the operations of electricians and other subterranean burrowers from the public gaze. A dirty-faced small boy in corduroys was tending a brazier of live coals, upon which some breakfast cans were steaming. Between the wigwam and the pavement a gigantic navvy was hewing wooden paving-blocks out of the roadway.

The spectacle did not attract my interest specially, as this particular piece of street had been eviscerated so often that I had grown callous to its sufferings. But I paused for a moment to survey the big navvy's muscles, and to wonder how early in the morning it would be necessary to rise in order to catch a small boy with a clean face. The navvy was a fine specimen of humanity, with a complexion tanned a dusky coffee colour.

I was reflecting on the joys of the simple life and the futility of politics and other indoor pastimes in general, when the big man rose from his stooping posture and caught my eye. He appeared a little disconcerted by my scrutiny, and turned his back and renewed his exertions with increased vigour, favouring me hereafter with what architects call a "south elevation" of himself.

I went home to breakfast, wondering where I had seen the big navvy's back before. I mentioned casually to Kitty and the Twins that Goring Street was up again. They wondered how the management of the Goring Hotel liked it, with that mess under their very windows, and agreed with me that it was high time Champion's Bill, due for its Third Reading to-morrow, became law.

I stayed in bed till lunch-time, and then, rather late in the afternoon, set out for the House, which I knew I should find in an extremely limp condition after its previous night's dissipation. On the way I called in at the Goring Hotel in Goring Street, where Champion lived when in town. I found him in his room on the first floor, gazing out of the window into the street.

I looked out too, to see what was interesting him. Directly below us lay the encampment of the workmen whom I had seen in the morning. They had hewed up a few yards of the wood pavement, and the smaller of the two men was now immersed up to his waist in a hole, working rather laboriously in the restricted space at his command with a pick-axe. The boy was piling wooden blocks into a neat heap, and the big man, whose form was only partially visible, was doing something inside the wigwam.

The roadway was more than half blocked, and cabs and omnibuses, in charge of overheated and eloquent drivers, were being filtered through the narrow space left at their disposal by a phlegmatic policeman.

"Look here," said Champion.

I looked.

"What on earth are those fellows doing?" he continued.

"Re-laying the road, perhaps."

"One doesn't re-lay a road by making a deep hole in it."

"Well—gas!"

"Gas and electric light mains in this street are all led along a special conduit reached by manholes every eighty yards," said Champion. "There's no need to dig."

"Well—drains!" said I vaguely. But I was a mere child in the hands of this expert.

"The drains, as you call them," he said testily, "consist of a great sewer away in the depths, accessible from various appointed places. Besides, nobody in his senses tries to lift earth out of a hole with a pick-axe."

"Perhaps the solution of the mystery lies inside the wigwam," I said.

"No. That is just what complicates matters. When a shaft leading down to the electric light mains is opened, one of those canvas shelters is put over the top. Now there is nothing under that shelter—nothing but the bit of road it covers. The thing seems to be simply a stage accessory, planted there to give the encampment an aspect of reality. Ah, look at that!"

"That" was a small piece of paving-wood, dexterously hurled by the dirty-faced boy, who seemed to be finding time hang rather heavily on his hands. It took a passing citizen in the small of the back, but when he swung round to detect the source of the missile the boy was on his knees again industriously blowing up the brazier.

With an indignant snort the citizen passed on his way, doubtless adding the outrage, in his mind, to the long list of unsolved London crimes. But retribution awaited the youthful miscreant. The phlegmatic policeman who was regulating the traffic on the single-line system happened to notice the deed. He walked majestically across from the far side of the street towards our excavating friends.

"Come on!" said Champion to me. "There's going to be some fun."

We stepped out through one of the windows, which possessed a broad balcony, and took our stand behind some laurels in tubs which lined the balustrade. The street was comparatively quiet at the time, and we were able to hear most of the dialogue that ensued.

"'Ere, mate," began the traffic-expert to the smaller of the two navvies, "just ketch that boy of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead, will you?"

The smaller man desisted from his labours in the hole.

"Wotsye, ole sport?" he inquired cheerily.

The policeman was a little ruffled by this familiarity.

"I'll trouble you," he repeated with some hauteur, "to ketch that boy of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead. If not, I shall 'ave to do my duty, according——"

Here the roar of a passing dray drowned his utterance.

The smaller man clambered nimbly out of the hole and proceeded to grab his young friend by the scruff of the neck.

"Billy," he remarked dispassionately, "this gentleman says as 'ow I'm to give you a clip on the side of the 'ead."

"Woffor," inquired Billy, simulating extreme terror.

The man passed the question on to the policeman, who explained the nature of the offence. His statement was voluntarily corroborated by several members of an audience which seemed to have materialised from nowhere, and now formed a ring round the encampment.

"Righto!" said the man with cheery acquiescence. "Billy, my lad, you've got to 'ave it."

"Tha's right, ole son! You give 'im socks," remarked a hoarse and rather indistinct voice of the gin-and-fog variety, from among the spectators.

Simultaneously its owner lurched his way to the front rank, the others making room for him with that respectful sympathy, not unmixed with envy, which is always accorded to a true-born Briton in his condition. He was obviously a member of some profession connected with coal-dust, and it was plain that he had been celebrating the conclusion of his day's labours.

The smaller navvy, thus exhorted, administered the desired clip. It was not a particularly severe one, but it drew from its recipient the somewhat unexpected expostulation—

"You silly ass! Not so hard!"

Where had I heard that stentorian but childish voice before? Who was this road-breaker's acolyte, with his brazier, his dirty face, and—a public-school accent?

I leaned over the balustrade and surveyed him and his two companions. Then I drew my breath sharply.

Merciful heavens!

The dirty-faced boy was my brother-in-law, Master Gerald Rubislaw, the clip-administerer was Dicky Lever, and the gigantic and taciturn navvy was—my Secretary!

Having witnessed the carrying-out of the sentence, the policeman returned to his duties; none too soon; for a furniture van and a butcher's cart, locked in an inextricable embrace, the subject of a sulphurous duet between their respective proprietors, called loudly for his attention.

Meanwhile Coaldust, who had been inspecting the result of our friends' united labours with some interest, suddenly echoed the question which had first exercised Champion's logical mind by inquiring what the blank dash the two adjectival criminals and the qualified nipper thought they were doing to the asterisked road.

He received no encouragement. Robin was now engaged with a hammer and chisel in cutting a sort of touch-line all round the encampment, while Dicky did not cease manfully to delve with the pick-axe in the pit which he had digged for himself. For a long time they turned a deaf ear to the anxious inquiries of their interlocutor.

But there are limits to long-suffering. Coaldust's witticisms increased with his audience, and at last Dicky turned to Robin and cried, with a really admirable maintenance of character and accent—

"'Ere, Scotty, come and give this bloke one in the neck. 'E's askin' for it!"

Robin deliberately suspended operations, rose heavily to his feet, and cleared his throat. Then he turned upon the alcoholic Coaldust. I strained my ears. Surely he was not going to talk Cockney!

Far from it. He stuck to his last.

"See here, ma man," he roared, in a voice that made the crowd jump, "are ye for a ding on the side o' the heid?"

Coaldust capitulated with alacrity.

"No offence, 'Orace!" he remarked genially. "You an' me was always pals. Put it there!" He extended an ebony hand, which Robin solemnly shook and returned to his work.

Whatever my three friends were up to, it is possible that they might now have been left in peace for some time; for the crowd, seeing no chance of further sport from Coaldust, began to melt away. But a fresh character entered the scene to keep alive the nagging interest of the drama.

My first intimation that something new was afoot came from an errand-boy on the edge of the crowd, who, addressing a lady or ladies unseen, suddenly expressed a desire to be chased.

All heads were now turned down the street, and there, approaching with rather faltering steps, carrying a red cotton bundle and a tea-can, I beheld—one of my sisters-in-law!

Postulating Dicky, I presumed it was Dilly, and I began to piece together in my mind the plot of this elaborate comedy. Evidently Dicky, Robin, and Gerald had decided—for a bet, or because they were dared, or possibly with a view to giving Champion's Bill a leg-up by a practical demonstration of the crying need for it—to dress themselves up as workmen and come and "do a turn," as they say in the music halls, to the discomfort of his Majesty's lieges and the congestion of traffic, upon some sufficiently busy thoroughfare for a stated period of time.

Certainly they were doing it rather well. They were admirably made up,—Dicky was a past-master at that sort of thing,—and their operations so far had been sufficiently like the genuine article to impose upon the public in general,—if we except Champion and Coaldust,—even to the point of securing the assistance of the traffic-directing policeman.

But alas! with that one step further, which is so often fatal to great enterprises, they had sought to add a finishing touch of realism to their impersonation by the inclusion of a little feminine interest; and to that end Dilly had been added to the cast—or more likely had added herself—in the role of a young person of humble station bringing her affianced his tea.

And, not for the first time in the history of man, it was the woman who opened the door to disaster.

Dilly wore a natty print dress—probably my housemaid's—with a tartan shawl over her head. She had on her thickest shoes, but they were woefully smart and thin for a girl of her class. Moreover, her hair was beautifully arranged under the shawl, and her hands—though she had had the sense to discard her ruby and sapphire engagement-ring—were too white and her face was too clean to lend conviction to her impersonation. In short, in her desire to present a pleasing tout ensemble—an object in which I must say she had succeeded to perfection—Dilly had utterly neglected detail and histrionic accuracy.

Evidently she was not expecting a gallery. Two highly-interested concentric circles—one of people and one of dogs—round her fiance's encampment was rather more than she had bargained for. She had emerged quite suddenly from a side street (which I knew led to a shortcut from home) and now paused irresolutely a few yards away, crimson to the roots of her hair, what time the errand-boy, with looks of undisguised admiration, continued to reiterate his desire to be pursued.

The crowd all turned and stared at poor Dilly. Obviously they did not know what to make of her. Possibly she was some one from the chorus of a musical comedy going to be photographed, possibly she was merely "a bit balmy," or possibly she was an advertisement for something, and would begin to distribute hand-bills presently. So far, she merely looked as if she wanted to cry.

It was Robin who saw her first. He immediately stepped over his newly-completed touch-line, and taking the spotted bundle and the tea-can from her hands, conducted her ceremoniously within the magic circle, saying, in a voice much more like his own than before—

"Come away, lassie!"

Dicky looked up from his labours at this, and beheld his fiancee for the first time. All he said was—

"By gad, you've done it after all! Bravo!"

But Dilly did not appear to be at all gratified She merely sat on Gerald's little mountain of paving-blocks, looking as if she could not decide whether to throw her apron over her face and scream, or take a header into the wigwam. My heart bled for her in spite of her folly. The crowd, deeply interested and breathing hard, stood round waiting for the performance to begin.

It was Coaldust who took the lead.

"Tip us a song and dance, Clara," he said encouragingly.

Robin, who had been making a show of unfastening the bundle, suddenly rose to his feet. Coaldust saw him.

"All right, Carnegie," he remarked hurriedly. "No offence, ole pal!"

But Robin turned to Dicky, and the two held a hasty conversation, whose nature I could guess. Dilly could not be exposed to this sort of thing any longer. They began to put on their coats.

"They are going to give it up," I said, not without relief. "About time, isn't it? Do you recognise them, Champion?"

But Champion, I found, was gone—probably to establish an alibi. Perhaps he was right. Questions might be asked in the House about this.

When I turned again to the scene below I found that the crowd had thickened considerably, and that the policeman had once more left the traffic to congest itself, and joined in the game.

"You must tell that young woman to move on," he said to Dicky, not unkindly. "She's causin' a crowd to collect, and that's a thing she can be give in charge for."

"All right," said Dicky hurriedly, "we're all going."

The policeman, struck by this sudden anxiety to oblige, became suspicious.

"All of you?" he said. "'Ow about this mess in the road?"

Robin came to the rescue.

"We'll be back presently and sort it," he said reassuringly.

"Of course," said Dicky, pulling himself together. "Back in 'arf a tick, governor!"

"Don't you go callin' me names," said the policeman, as the spectators indulged in happy laughter.

"Sorry!—I mean, certainly!" said Dicky, getting flustered. (I could see Robin glowering at him.) "We are just going down the street a minute. This—er—girl has brought us a bit of bad news. There's been an accident happened—er——"

"To her puir old mither," put in Robin, whom I began to suspect of rather enjoying this entertainment for its own sake.

This heartrending piece of intelligence touched the crowd, and Coaldust was instantly forward in proposing an informal vote of condolence, which was seconded by a bare-armed lady in a deerstalker cap. But the policeman, evidently roused by our friends' ill-judged and precipitate attempt to strike camp, suddenly produced a pocket-book from his tunic, and said—

"It is my duty to take your names and addresses, together with the name of the firm employing you."

This announcement obviously disconcerted Dicky and Robin; for it is one thing to take part in a masquerade, and another to get out of the consequences thereof by cold-drawn lying.

However, the policeman was sucking his pencil and waiting, so Dicky said—

"You can get all the information you want from the Borough Surveyor."

It was a bold effort, but the policeman merely said—

"Your name, please!"

Dicky, fairly cornered, replied—

"Er—Samuel"—I thought at first he was going to say "Inglethwaite," and was prepared to drop a flower-pot on his head if he did; but he continued, with the air of one offering a real bargain at the price—"Phillipps."

"Two P's?" inquired the constable.

"Three," said Dicky.

The policeman rolled a threatening eye upon him.

"Be careful!" he said in an awful voice.

"One of them comes at the beginning," said Dicky meekly.

"Haw, haw!" roared several people in the crowd, which was unfortunate for Dicky. He was one of those people who would risk a kingdom to raise a laugh.

"Address?" continued the policeman.

"Buck'nam Pallis!" shouted Coaldust, before any one else in the crowd could say it.

The policeman turned and directed upon him a look that would have entirely obfuscated a soberer man.

"I'll attend to you presently," he said in the exact tones which my dentist employs when he shuts me into the waiting-room. "Now then, your address? Come along!"

Dicky gave some address which I did not catch, and the representative of the law turned to Robin. The latter evidently saw rocks ahead if the inquisition was to be extended to the whole party. He said—

"Surely there is no need to take any more names."

"I'll be responsible for the lot," added Dicky eagerly—too eagerly. "Now let's be off! Come along Di—Liza!"

He took Dilly by the arm, and, preceded by Gerald, began to press through the crowd, which by this time extended almost right across the street.

But the now thoroughly aroused guardian of the peace, determined not to be rushed like this, broke away from Robin, who was engaging him in pleasant conversation, and, hastening after the retreating group, laid a detaining and imperious hand on Dilly's arm.

What happened next I was not quick enough to see. But there was a swirl and a heave in the crowd, and presently Dicky became visible, standing in a very heroic attitude with his arm round Dilly; while the policeman, with an awe-inspiring deliberateness which implied "Now you have gone and done it!" extricated himself majestically but painfully from the chasm in the road which had recently been occupying Dicky's attention, and into which Dicky in defence of his beloved had apparently pushed him.

Picking up his pocket-book and putting it back into his chest, and uttering the single and awful word "Assault!" the policeman produced a whistle and blew it.

Things were certainly getting serious, and I had just decided to send out the hotel porter to the policeman to tell him to bring his captives inside out of the way of the crowd, when I noticed that Robin was ploughing his way towards the outskirts of the throng, waving his arm as he went. Then I saw that his objective was another policeman—an Inspector this time. He was a gigantic creature, and Robin and he, slowly forging towards each other through the surrounding sea of faces, looked like two liners in a tideway.

Robin's conduct in deliberately attracting the notice of yet another representative of law and order appeared eccentric on the face of it, but his subsequent behaviour was more peculiar still.

He seized the newly-arrived giant by the arm, and drew him apart from the crowd, where he told him something which appeared to amuse them both considerably.

"Yewmorous dialogue," announced Coaldust to his neighbours, "between Cleopartrer's Needle and the Moniment!"

But it was more than that,—it was deep calling to deep. Presently the explanation, or the joke, or whatever it was, came to an end, and the Inspector advanced threateningly upon the crowd.

"Pass along, there, pass along!" he cried with a devastating sweep of his arm. He spoke with a Highland accent, and I realised yet once more the ubiquity of that great Mutual Benefit Society which has its headquarters north of the Tweed.

The crowd politely receded about six inches, and through them, accompanied by Robin, the Inspector clove his way to the encampment, where Dicky, who seemed to be rapidly losing his head, was delivering a sort of recitative to every one in general, accompanied by the policeman on the whistle.

What the Inspector said to his subordinate I do not know, but the net result was that in a very short time the former was escorting the entire party of excavators down the street, attended by a retinue of small boys (who were evidently determined to see if it was going to turn out a hanging matter); while the latter, to whom the clearing of the "house" had evidently been deputed, set about that task with a vigour and ferocity which plainly indicated a well-meaning and zealous mind tingling under an entirely undeserved official snub.

* * * * *

They told me all about it in the smoking-room that night.

"The idea," began Dicky, "was——"

"Whose idea was it?" I inquired sternly "It was all of our idea," replied my future relative by marriage lucidly.

"But who worked it out?" I asked,—"the plot, the business, the 'props'? It was a most elaborate production."

"Never you mind that, old man," said Dicky lightly. (But I saw that Robin was laboriously relighting his pipe and surrounding himself with an impenetrable cloud of smoke.) "Listen to the yarn. The idea was to stake out a claim in some fairly busy road and stay there for a given time—say, six o'clock till tea-time—and kid the passing citizens that we were duly authorised to get in the way and mess up the traffic generally. If we succeeded we were going to write to The Times or some such paper and tell what we had done—anonymously, of course—just to show how necessary Champion's Bill is."

"Have you written the letter?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't send it if I were you."

"Well, that's what Robin here has been saying."

"Putrid rot if we don't!" remarked Gerald, who had by this time washed his face, but ought to have been in bed for all that.

"We can't do it," said Robin. "For one thing, we have attracted quite enough public attention already,—it's bound to be in the papers anyhow, now, and that will probably give the Bill all the advertisement it needs,—and if we give the authorities any more clues our names may come out. For another thing, it wouldn't be fair to Hector MacPherson."

"Who is he?"

"That Inspector who came up at the critical moment. He was one of my first friends in London."

"I remember. Go on."

"I was thankful to see him, I can tell you. Well, he undertook to square that poor bewildered bobby, and to take steps to get the road cleared and the hole filled up."

"How?"

"There is a street being mended just round the corner, and he said he would get the foreman of the gang, who is a relation of his wife's, to send a couple of men to put things right immediately. It's probably done by now."

"Then I suppose we may regard the incident as closed."

"Yes, I suppose so."

There was a silence.

"It was a bit of a failure at the finish," said Dicky meditatively, "but it was a success on the whole—what?"

"Rather!" said his fellow-conspirators.

"Our chief difficulty," continued Dicky, "was to decide on the exact type of drama to present. I was all for our dressing up as foreigners, and relaying an asphalte street. It would have been top-hole to trot about in list slippers and pat the hot asphalte down with those things they use. And think of the make-up!—curly moustaches and earrings! And we could have jabbered spoof Italian. But then old Robin here, who I must say has a headpiece on him, pointed out that the scenery and props would be much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff; so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we finally decided to select some street with a wooden pavement, and maul it about generally for as long as we could. If we got interfered with by anybody official, we meant to talk some rot about the Borough Surveyor, and skedaddle if necessary. But it all worked beautifully!"

"Where did you get your tools and tent?"

"Robin managed that," said Dicky admiringly.

Robin looked extremely dour, and I refrained from further inquiry.

"Robin's got some rum pals, I don't think!" observed Gerald pertinently.

"Didn't I make these chaps up well?" continued Dicky enthusiastically. "We roared when you passed us at breakfast-time without spotting us."

"Very creditable impersonation," I replied, getting up and knocking my pipe out. "I only hope I shan't have to resign my seat over it. If I may venture to offer a criticism, the weak spot in the enterprise was the idea of inviting your lady friends to come and take tea with you."

"Just what I said all along, my boy," remarked the experienced Gerald, wagging his head sagely. "That was what mucked up the show. Wherever there's a petticoat there's trouble. Oh, I warned them!"

On my way up to bed I flushed Dilly from a window-seat on the staircase, where she had evidently been lingering on the off-chance of a supplementary good-night from Dicky.

"Well?" I said severely.

"Well?"

"Do you know what time it is?"

"I expect your wife will tell you that when you get upstairs," said Dilly.

I tried a fresh line.

"After the labours of to-day, I should have thought you would have been glad to go to bed," I said. "You imp!" And I laughed. There is something very disarming about the Twins' misdemeanours.

We turned and walked upstairs together, and paused outside Dilly's door.

"Good-night, Dilly," I said. "I admired your pluck."

"It wasn't me," said Dilly, in a very small voice.

"Not you?"

"N-no. I said I would come, because Dicky said I daren't, and at the last moment I funked it. (Adrian, I simply couldn't!) So Dolly went instead."

"Then that was Dolly all the time?"

"Yes."

"And she went, just to—to——"

"To save my face. She's a brick," said Dilly.

This, by the way, was the first occasion on which I realised the truth of Robin's dictum that Dilly and Dolly were girls of widely different character.

"And didn't the others recognise her?"

"No. That's the best of it!"

"Not Dicky?"

"No."

"Not even Robin? He is pretty hard to deceive, you know."

"No, not even Robin. None of them know Good-night!"

But she was wrong.



CHAPTER NINE.

THE POLICY OF THE CLOSED DOOR.

Dilly's wedding took place the following summer, just before Parliament rose, and the resources of our establishment were strained to the uttermost to give her a fitting send-off.

It is true that a noble relative, the head of my wife's family, offered his house for the reception, but Dilly emphatically declined to be married from any but mine, saying prettily that she would not leave the roof under which she had lived so happily until the last possible moment.

Accordingly we made immense preparations. The drawing-room on the first floor, accustomed though it was to accommodate congested and half-stifled throngs of human beings, was deemed too small for the mob of wedding-guests whom Kitty expected.

"You see, dear," she explained, "we can squash up good people as much as we like, because their clothes don't matter; but women in wedding-frocks will be furious if they don't get enough elbow-room to show themselves."

Accordingly a marquee was erected in the garden at the back of the house, opening into the dining-room through the French windows, and it was arranged that Dicky and Dilly were to take their stand in the middle of the same, what time the guests, having lubricated their utterance at the buffet in the dining-room en route, filed past and delivered their congratulations. After that the company was to overflow into the garden, there to be moved by a concord of sweet sounds emanating from a band of assassins in pseudo-Hungarian uniforms.

"And if it rains," concluded Kitty desperately, "they must have an overflow meeting in the basement—that's all!"

My library, as I had feared, was appropriated for the presents, and for several days I transacted the business of State at the wash-hand-stand in my dressing-room, while a stream of callers, ranging from the members of a Working Men's Club in which Dilly was fitfully interested, down to an organisation of Kitty's whose exact title I can never recall (but which Dicky, on first seeing them, immediately summed up as "The Hundred Worst Women"), filed solemnly past rows of filigree coffee-services, silver-backed hair-brushes, and art pen-wipers.

Of the bride-elect I saw little, and when I did, she was usually standing, in a state of considerable deshabille, amid a kneeling group of myrmidons, who, with mouths filled with pins and brows seamed with anxiety, were remorselessly building her into some edifice of shimmering silk and filmy lace, oblivious of their victim's plaintive intimations that she was fit to drop.

Dicky invited Robin to be his best man, a proceeding which, while it roused some surprise among those who were expecting him to fix upon a friend of longer standing and greater distinction, showed his good sense, for my secretary proved himself a model of organisation and helpfulness. Although born and reared up in the straitest sect of some Scottish denomination, about which I am unable to particularise beyond the fact that they regarded the use of harmoniums in churches as "the worship of men's feet," he betrayed a surprising knowledge of Anglican ritual and stage effect.

On the wedding morning, having left the bridegroom securely tucked up in bed, under strict orders not to get up till he was called, Robin personally conducted a select party of those interested—Dolly, Dilly, another bridesmaid, and myself—to the church, where he showed us the exact positions of our entrances and exits; and then proceeded, with the assistance of Dolly, to plant hassocks about the chancel in such a manner as to leave us no doubts as to the whereabouts of our moorings (or "stances," as he called them) at the actual ceremony.

The party was reinforced at this point by the arrival of no less a person than the bridegroom, who, having risen from his slumbers in defiance of Robin's injunctions, was now proceeding to infringe the laws of propriety by coming in search of his beloved four hours before he was entitled to do so.

However, as Dilly rather pessimistically pointed out, it was probably the last time she would ever get a kind word out of him, so we gave them ten minutes together in the porch, while Robin interviewed vergers and Dolly intimidated perspiring persons with red carpets and evergreens.

On our return home Dilly was snatched away by a cloud of attendant sprites, and we saw her no more until the time came for me to drive her to the church. We heard of her, though; for as we sat at luncheon, plying the bridegroom (who had collapsed after the complete and inevitable fashion of his kind about twelve o'clock) with raw brandy, a message came down from the upper regions, to the effect that Miss Dilly would take a couple of veal cutlets and a glass of Burgundy, as she wasn't going to be a pale bride if she could help it!

However, this half-hysterical gaiety came to an end in the face of reality, and in the carriage on the way to church poor Dilly wept unrestrainedly on my shoulder. I mopped her up to the best of my ability, but she was still sobbing when we reached the church door, to find the six bridesmaids, together with Phillis (inordinately proud of her office of train-bearer), preening themselves in the porch.

It had been arranged that the organ should break into "The March of the Priests," from 'Athalie'—Dicky's petition in favour of an ecclesiastical rendering of "The Eton Boating Song" had been thrown out with ignominy—as the bridal procession entered the nave. Unfortunately the organ-loft was out of sight of the west door, by which we were to enter, and the conveyance of the starting-signal to the proper quarter at exactly the right moment was a matter of some difficulty. However, Robin's gift for stage-management was sufficient to meet the emergency. When all was ready Dolly calmly mounting the steps of the font to an eminence which commanded a precarious but sufficient view of the body of the church, briefly fluttered a scrap of lace handkerchief, and then stepped demurely down into her place at the head of the bridesmaids. Simultaneously the organ burst into the opening strains of Mendelsohn's march—I suppose Robin had been waiting at some point of vantage to pass the signal on—and we advanced up the aisle, amid a general turning of heads and flutter of excitement.

The church was packed. In the back pew I remember noticing three young men with pads of flimsy paper and well-sucked pencils. I distinctly caught sight of the words "Sacred edifice" in the nearest MS., and I have no doubt the others contained it as well.

But Dilly was still quaking on my arm, and the only other spectacle which attracted my attention on the way up the aisle was that of my wife (looking very like a bride herself, I thought), sitting in a front pew with Master Gerald, that infant phenomenon shining resplendently in a white waistcoat and a "buttonhole" which almost entirely obscured his features. Then I caught sight of Robin's towering shoulders and the pale face and glassy eye of the bridegroom, and I knew that we had brought our horses to the water at last, and all that now remained to do was to make them drink.

The rest of the ceremony passed off with due impressiveness, if we except a slight contretemps arising from the behaviour of my daughter, who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness but obvious sincerity.

Then came the inevitable orgy of osculation in the vestry, from which I escaped with nothing worse, so to speak, than a few scratches, despite an unprovoked and unexpected flank attack (when I was signing the register) from an elderly female in bugles, whom I at first took to be a rather giddy pew-opener, but who ultimately proved to be a maiden aunt of the bridegroom's.

After Dicky and Dilly—the latter miraculously restored to high spirits and looking radiant—had passed smiling and blushing down the aisle, to be received outside with breathless stares by a large assemblage of that peculiar class of people—chiefly females of a certain age—who seem to spend their lives in attending the weddings of total strangers, we all got home, where there was much champagne, and cake-cutting, and bride-kissing, and melody from the aforementioned musicians in the garden.

The presents—guarded with an air of studied aloofness by a wooden-jointed detective, clad in garments of such festal splendour as to delude several short-sighted old gentlemen into an impression that he was the bridegroom—played their usual invaluable part in promoting circulation among the guests, and supplying a topic for conversation. They certainly sparkled and glittered bravely in the library, where the blinds were drawn and the electric lamps turned on. (Kitty had seen to that. Silver looks so well by artificial light, and so, by a happy and unpremeditated coincidence, does the female sex.)

The bride and bridegroom departed at last, amid a shower of rice, with that emblem of conjugal felicity, the satin slipper, firmly adhering to the back of the brougham. (Master Gerald had seen to that.) Then the guests began to make their adieux and melt away, and presently we found ourselves alone in the marquee, a prey to that swift and penetrating melancholy that descends upon those who begin to be festive too early in the day, and find themselves unable to keep it up till bed-time.

* * * * *

However, there was a recrudescence of activity and brightness in the evening, as the idea of a small dance had been proposed and carried, and the invitations issued and accepted, during the five minutes which witnessed the departure of the more intimate section of the guests.

When I returned from the House about midnight—I had gone there chiefly to dine, as lobster claws and melted ices appeared to be the only fare in prospect at home—tired to death, and conscious of an incipient cold in the head, arising from forced residence in a house in which hardly a door had been on its hinges for three days, I became aware that I was once again the lessee of a cave of harmony.

The pseudo-Hungarian assassins were pounding out the latest waltz, with a disregard for time and tune which I at first attributed to champagne, but which a closer survey proved to be due to the fact that the band was being conducted, surprising as it may seem, by my brother-in-law, who had kindly undertaken to wield the baton, while the Chief Tormentor (or whatever his proper title may have been) charged himself anew at the refreshment counter. A popping of corks in the supper-room apprised me of the fact that my guests were doing their best, at my expense, to make the Excise Returns a more cheerful feature of next year's Budget.

I went upstairs in search of a white waistcoat and one or two other necessary contributions to the festivity of the evening, picking my way with the utmost care among the greatly-engrossed couples who impeded every step; and finally arrived at my dressing-room, to find that that hallowed apartment had been turned into a ladies' cloak-room, and that every available article of furniture stood elbow-deep under some attractive combination of furs and feathers.

I unearthed the things I required, but lacked the courage to stay and put them on. At any moment I might be invaded by a damsel who had met with some mishap in the heat of the fray, and was now desirous, as they say in the navy, of "executing repairs while under steam." I accordingly left the room and mounted towards the top of the house. I had in my mind's eye a snug little apartment, situated somewhere in the attics, devoted chiefly to dressmaking operations, where I knew there was a mirror, and I might complete my toilet in peace.

With becoming modesty I penetrated to this haven by the back-stairs. I had just reached the top, which was opposite the door in question, when I heard voices. Evidently some one was coming up to this same landing by the front stair.

A man does not look his best when found creeping up his own back-stairs with a white waistcoat in one hand and a pair of pumps in the other, and I confess I retreated downwards and backwards a couple of paces. The stair on which I stood was unlighted, and I had a good view of the landing.

The voices came nearer, and I could now hear the rustling of silks and laces. Presently I recognised the voices, and immediately after this their owners came into view, with their backs almost towards me.

"This is the room I mean," said the man, indicating my goal.

"That! All right! Only I don't see why you should drag me all the way up here," said the girl. "There are much nicer sitting-out places downstairs. Still, anything for a rest. Come on!"

She entered the room, followed by her partner. I saw his broad back for a moment as it filled the doorway. Then he turned in my direction with his hand on the handle, and it seemed to me that he hesitated a moment.

Finally he shut the door firmly, and—I distinctly heard the key turned in the lock.

I went downstairs again.

* * * * *

It was four o'clock in the morning. The last guest had gone, the domestics had retired to their subterranean retreat, and the musicians had all been booked through to Saffron Hill in one cab.

The dawn was just breaking over the house-tops on the other side of the square, and the sky was bathed in a curious heather-coloured light—a sure sign of a wet day to come, said hill-bred Robin. We stood out on the steps,—Kitty, Dolly, Robin, and I,—and Kitty put her arm round her sister's waist. I knew she was thinking of the absent Dilly.

Behind us, in the hall, Master Gerald, completely surfeited with about sixteen crowded hours of glorious life, lay fast asleep on a settee.

I looked curiously at Dolly as she leaned on her sister's shoulder. She was half a head taller than Kitty, and as she stood there, rosily flushed, in the dawn of her splendid womanhood, she might have stood for the very goddess whose first rays were now falling on her upturned face and glinting hair.

Then I looked at Robin, towering beside her, and suddenly I felt a little ashamed of myself.

For to tell the truth I had been very unhappy that evening, and I had been looking forward in a few minutes' time to unburdening myself to Kitty about recent events. But as I surveyed Dolly and Robin, curiously alike in their upright carriage and steady gaze, I suddenly realised that such a pair could safely be trusted to steer their own course; and I decided there and then not to communicate even to Kitty—my wife and Dolly's sister—the knowledge of what I had seen that night.

Kitty turned impulsively to her sister.

"After all, I've still got you, Dolly," she said.

I took a furtive glance at Robin's inscrutable countenance.

"I—wonder!" I said to myself.

"What, dear?" said Kitty.

"Nothing. I must carry this young ruffian up to bed, I suppose."

Curiosity has been most unfairly ear-marked as the exclusive monopoly of the female sex. But as I stumbled upstairs that night, bearing in my arms the limp but stertorous carcase of my esteemed relative by marriage, I could not help wondering (despite my efforts to put away from me a matter which I had decided was not my business) exactly what Robin had said to Dolly behind that locked door.



CHAPTER TEN.

ROBIN'S WAY OF DOING IT.

What happened when Robin locked the door on himself and Dolly is now set down here. Strictly speaking it ought to come later, but there is no need to make a mystery about it. I have taken the account of the proceedings mainly from the letter which Dolly wrote to Dilly three days later.

It would be useless to reproduce that document in full. In the first place, it contains a good deal that is not only irrelevant but absolutely incomprehensible. There is one mysterious passage, for instance, occurring right in the middle of the letter, beginning, To turn the heel, knit to three beyond the seam-stitch, knit two together, purl one, turn: then knit ten, knit two together, knit one, purl one ... introduced by an airy, "By the way, dear, before I forget"——which appears to have no bearing on the context whatever.

In the second place, Dolly's literary style is as breathlessly devoid of punctuation as that of most of her sex. Commas and notes of interrogation form her chief stock-in-trade, though underlining is freely employed. There is not a single full-stop from start to finish. The extracts from the letter here reproduced have been edited by me. Other details of the incident have been tactfully extracted by Kitty and myself—chiefly Kitty, I must confess—from the principals themselves, and the whole is now offered to the public, unabridged, with marginal comments, for the first time.

* * * * *

On entering the little room on the landing Dolly dropped on to a shabby but comfortable old sofa behind the door, and said, with a contented sigh—

"I'm so tired, Robin. Aren't you? Let's sit down and not talk till it's time to go downstairs again. It's—Robin, what are you doing?"

Robin was locking the door.

That operation completed, he turned and looked round the little room. There was an arm-chair in the corner, but he came and sat down on the sofa beside Dolly. Dolly gazed at him dumbly.

* * * * *

"He looked so utterly grim and determined" [says the letter], "that my heart began to bump in a perfectly fatuous way. I felt like a woman who is going to be murdered in a railway tunnel.

"He sat down, and one of his huge hands was suddenly stretched towards me, and I thought at first he was trying to grab one of mine. I did my best to edge away along the sofa, but I was up against the end already.

"Then his hand opened, and something dropped into my lap. It was the key of the door.

"'I have locked it,' he said, 'not with any intention of keeping you in, but in the hope of keeping other people out. You are perfectly free to get up and go whenever you please, if you don't wish to listen to what I have to say.'

"Well, dear, I suppose I ought to have risen to my full height, and, with a few superb gestures of haughty contempt, have swept majestically from the room. But—I didn't! I saw I was in for another proposal, and as the man couldn't eat me I decided to let him do his worst.

"It was a weird proposal, though." [Spelt 'wierd.'] "It wasn't exactly what he said, because one is never surprised at anything a man may say when he is proposing; but the way he said it. All men say pretty much the same thing in the end, but most of them are so horribly nervous that they simply don't know what they're talking about for the first five minutes or so. (Do you remember poor little Algy Brock? He was nearly crying all the time. At least he was with me, and I suppose he was with you too.) But Robin might have been having a chat with his solicitor the way he behaved. I'll tell you..."

Robin apparently began by telling Dolly, quite simply and plainly, that he loved her. Then he gave a brief outline of the history of his affection. It had begun at the very beginning of things, he said, almost as soon as he discovered that he could distinguish Dolly from Dilly without the aid of the brown spot. "And that was after I had been in the house just three days," he added.

For some time, it appeared, he had been content to be pleasantly in love. He enjoyed Dolly's society when it came his way, but with native caution he had taken care to avoid seeking too much of it in case he should gradually find himself unable to do without it.

"I saw from the first," he said, "that you were entirely unconscious of my feelings towards you; and I would not have had it otherwise. If I was to succeed at all it must be as an acquired taste; and acquired tastes, as you know, are best formed unconsciously."