"Georgie"/The Humorist

by Dorothea Deakin

III

The Humorist

E were spending our summer holiday at Marybeach, Drusilla and I and our son. We had been there a week. It was a glorious, golden day, almost without shadows. Matthew Arnold was for the moment quiet, and I closed my eyes. The voice of a pierrot, sweetened by distance, fitted in with my mood, but presently soft little steps in the sand aroused me, and I opened my eyes upon Drusilla, standing in a golden haze against the September blue.

"Look at this, Martin! Oh, do look at this!"

I took the telegram and read it:

 

Please come to me at once with or without Martin.

Georgie.

 

"Well!" said I. "Upon my word!"

"Something awful must have happened to him," she said hurriedly. "He must be ill or have broken his leg, or something worse. Evidently he didn't want to frighten his mother, or he would have wired to her. It is nice to feel that he always turns to us when he is in trouble, isn't it?"

"Humph!" said I, turning my son right way up. He happened to be standing on his head in the sand, in a vain attempt to swallow himself whole.

"Martin, you know how he relies upon you."

"I ought to by this time," I said drily.

Drusilla looked sentimentally out to sea.

"I always feel," said she, "that we owe something to Georgie. I always remember that I at least have much to make up to him."

I laughed. I believe Drusilla will hold to her dying day the opinion that Georgie's heart is given wholly to her. All the disgraceful things he has done, ever since she gave him up for me, she has, I believe, put down to his blighted hopes at that time—a time I have every reason to believe to be firmly forgotten by Georgie.

"Matthew Arnold," said I, "the mere fact of your being my son is no reason why you should lick all the polish from my shoe."

Drusilla picked up the boy indignantly.

"He is kissing it!" she cried. "He thought it would please you. It is one of his pretty ways. And what am I to do about Georgie's wire?"

"Wire back and ask if he is ill," I suggested sensibly.

She looked doubtful.

"If it is anything serious, won't it be an awful waste of time?" she asked.

I sat up lazily.

"Do you want to go?"

She shook the sand out of Matthew Arnold's thin hair.

"Nurse can be left with Baby quite well for one night. You see—if anything serious happened before we got there, we should never quite forgive ourselves, should we? And fancy having to tell his mother the awful truth afterwards!"

"Don't you rather jump to fatal conclusions?" I asked mildly.

She shivered.

"Oh, Martin, we don't want to be haunted to our dying days by the memory of how we left the poor boy alone to his trouble, perhaps to his death, do we?"

I was silent. The pierrot in the distance sang sadly:

 

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you're weeping alone.

 

Perhaps this, with Drusilla's arguments, softened my heart. Something must have happened to weaken my brain, for I said, "Yes," and she picked up her boy and dragged me in to look for a railway guide.

Georgie had wired from Neath, a little town in South Wales, and I patiently planned out our tedious and disagreeable route. I couldn't think what had taken him to such an impossible place, a haunt merely of intoxicated miners and, for the moment, equally intoxicated revivalists.

Georgie met us at Neath very late at night. We were tired and dusty, and Drusilla was anxious. She was surprised, I think, that he came without an ambulance and crutches—surprised that he was able to come at all.

"Well?" said I, shortly. An uncomfortable suspicion lurking in my mind came to light much strengthened.

"Drusilla, you are an angel. Martin, it's jolly decent of you to come with her."

"Well," I said quietly, "I rather think I shouldn't have let her come alone. What is the matter with you?"

"The matter?" Georgie looked puzzled. "With me? Oh, I'm all right. It's not me."

I stared.

Drusilla gave a queer little laugh.

"What have you been doing now, Georgie?" she asked.

She guessed by Georgie's face, I suppose, the sort of help he wanted, just as I guessed it by my previous experience of his habits.

"Don't let's go into details on this beastly station," said he hastily. "I know you '11 be glad I wired when I explain things. At least, Drusilla will. She's always kind. How's old Muffin face?"

Drusilla beamed. "Baby's sweeter than ever, and he's always asking for you in his own pretty way. Georgie, why have you brought us all these miles to this dreadful place?"

Georgie hurriedly changed the subject once more.

"I've ordered a ripping supper for you at the hotel," said he, which was comforting. It was some time before I referred to the subject again; but after supper Georgie himself gulped down a last glass of beer and made a plunge.

"Drusilla, you'll understand. Martin always was an unsympathetic beast to me. I suppose I'd better begin at the beginning."

"Generally," I murmured, "it is as well. Why did you come to South Wales at all?"

"My mother asked me to come. She wants some new ponies, you know, and she'd heard of a ripping little pair down here."

"Go on," said I. Drusilla leaned her elbows on the table, and gazed eagerly into Georgie's open face.

"I came by the night train, "he said, "changing all the time, and I had nothing to eat but a stale bun at Craven Arms. I was hungry. I got into Neath some time in the horrid gray dawn. They thought I was a beastly bagman at the hotel and gave me a ripping breakfast. I let 'em go on thinking it on account of the grub. Why do commercial travellers want so much more to eat than other men, Martin?"

"I haven't the least idea," said I. "Go on with your story, Georgie. We're interested."

"After breakfast," he went on, "I strolled out into the town, and when I had walked up and down a bit I noticed something—"

"Well?"

"There's a kind of hall here," Georgie said, "calling itself a theatre, and on the wall there was a bill—a flaming thing all scarlet and black; caught the eye like anything, don't you know. But it wasn't only the bill that caught mine. There was some one reading it."

"Ah!" said I.

"What was she like?" Drusilla asked gently.

Georgie flushed.

"She was crying. I could see the tears rolling down her poor little face, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying all night. It makes me feel furious to see a woman cry. I went across and asked her what the matter was. I could see how jolly pretty she must have been if she hadn't cried so much—"

"Well?" I asked sadly. "Go on, Georgie."

"This is the bill."

He pulled a long, narrow strip of yellow paper from his pocket and laid it open on the supper table. We studied it with deep interest. When we had finished, it was to turn to Georgie, and back again to the bill with horror. It read something like this:

 

Look out for the Original King's Own Cambrian Minstrels. The Programme Consists of First-Rate-Up-To-Date-Songs. All New Sayings. All New Doings. No Stale Business Introduced. The Artists Engaged Have Appeared, in all the Leading Places in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Don't Forget This Visit! Patrons Can Rely Upon a Programme Free from Vulgarity. First you Smile. Then you laugh. Finally you scream! Proprietor, Mr. Wallace Lappin.

 

Drusilla handed it back to him with perplexed eyes.

"Thank you," she said, "it's very interesting, but why does he want the people to scream? Do people scream in South Wales when they're pleased?"

"Was the weeping lady," I asked slowly, "one of the King's Own Cambrian Minstrels?" Suspicion was strong in my brain.

"She ought to have been," Georgie cried indignantly. "This fellow Lappin engaged her, and she came all the way from Devonshire to join this troupe. Spent all the money she had on the fare, and now that she's here, all that there is left to meet her is this bill."

"Do you mean to say," I asked, "that there are no King's Own, etc?"

"Not here," said Georgie. "She was to be here last Wednesday for rehearsal, and she's never heard a word from Lappin. She's stranded here without a penny. She can't even pay for her room, poor little girl!"

"Why doesn't she write home?"

"That's just it," said Georgie, "she daren't. She ran away to come on the stage, and her father has disowned her. He's a clergyman down in Devonshire somewhere. It's a sickening shame. There's a pianist chap stranded here, too."

"Has he any money?"

"No," said Georgie, slowly.

"Has he quarrelled with his people, too?"

"Not exactly; only they don't quite approve of him. He's a helpless sort of beggar, you know; can't do anything but tinkle out accompaniments rather badly. He wired home, and I saw the wire, but there's been no answer to it. He said: 'Lappin missing. Nanty mendzes.'"

"Nanty what?" Drusilla asked in astonishment.

"Nanty mendzes," Georgie explained proudly. "'No money,' he meant. It's professional slang. I've learnt a lot of it the last few days."

"Oh!" Drusilla looked at the fire. "Georgie, don't think me very hateful, but isn't it just possible that these people may be taking you in?"

"No," said Georgie, shortly; "it isn't. I know a nice girl when I see one."

"You ought to." I spoke softly, and he disregarded the jeer.

"They're doing their best to get another shop, and they've answered heaps of advertisements in the 'stage'; but it's no go. And, in any case, they haven't enough money to get out of the town. Of course if they got anything decent to go to, I would finance them with pleasure, but they don't seem to have any luck."

"Would you, indeed?" I murmured. "Are they complete strangers to each other?"

"Quite. The pianist comes from Liverpool, poor chap, and this girl, as I said, from Devonshire. She thought Lappin's advertisement was genuine. The pianist had his doubts from the beginning, he says; but he risked it because he had been out so long, and he's a bit of an ass, anyhow. Long hair, you know, and collars that are—well—I can't think why he wears 'em. The girl's as sweet as a rose, and that's why I asked you to come, Drusilla."

She turned and looked at him in surprise.

"Me, Georgia? But what can I do?"

Georgia's ingenuous face took on that pink shade which becomes it so well.

"I've known a good many girls," said he, "but never one with such fetching ways as you have. And I've never known a woman with a kinder heart. I thought if you came here and saw her for yourself, you might do something for this girl. She's too good for this dreadful life; she ought to give it up. I thought perhaps you might be able to persuade her to earn her living in a different way to teach, or typewrite, or something dull and respectable. It seemed to me—" He hesitated. "I thought, don't you know, that she was the kind of girl who might come an awful smash if she kept it up, and I guessed that you'd be glad to help her before it was too late. Women can talk to each other, don't you know, and it was impossible for me to tell her what I really thought about her beastly profession. Some of these pierrots and minstrels are jolly decent chaps, but I don't think it 's a nice life for a lady—do you, Martin?"

I was silent; so was Drusilla. Georgie went on very earnestly.

"You see, she's had such a sickener now that she would be glad to give it up, I believe. I think Mr. Lappin has washed a little of the rosy bloom off the life for her just now. Don't be angry with me Drusilla."

Drusilla made an effort. "I never can be really angry with you, Georgie—at least not for long. But I don't think you ought to let yourself get so deeply interested in all kinds of girls, now that you are more than half engaged to Phillida. And how can I influence a girl I've never spoken to in my life, even if she is genuine?" She laughed helplessly. "Oh, Georgie, you know they always say they're clergymen's daughters, don't they, even in novels?"

"Upon my word," said I at last, "I think you must be mad. To bring us all this way on a wild goose—"

"Georgie's goose is a swan." Drusilla gave another queer little cough. "It always is. And he generally cooks it; don't you, Georgie?"

Georgie rose.

"I'm going to bed," he said. "You can heap your insults on my empty chair when I'm gone. If I stop any longer, I shall say something I'm sorry for, and I shall be glad of it. You will see her in the morning, and then perhaps you will understand that I'm not quite such a giddy fool as you think me."

"I devoutly hope not," said I with some earnestness.

We were very tired, but before she went to sleep Drusilla found time to say that she really did think it was time Georgie grew up. She saw now, she said, why he hadn't sent for his mother.

And in the morning we found him waiting for us, with a girl—the girl, of course. Drusilla and I exchanged quick glances. Perhaps we had both expected powder and meretriciously bronzed hair. Here were neither. Hair as smooth and soft and darkly brown as Drusilla's own, and large, innocent eyes, stupid and brown, rather like the eyes of a cow, and a delicate oval face, palely pathetic. Her little mouth drooped at the corners, and she had pretty teeth. She wore a shabby blue serge dress and a little French sailor hat, and, at Georgie's introduction, she came shyly forward. Everything about her attitude figure, eyes, pretty, sulky mouth—struck me as being appealing, and I was not surprised, that to Georgie the single-hearted, her appeal had gone home. Her name, it seemed, was Fitzgerald.

Drusilla spoke first, kindly enough.

"You will have some breakfast with us, won't you? Martin do try to get some dry toast. And I must have tea, not coffee."

It was a curious meal, and an extremely silent one. Miss Fitzgerald was frankly hungry, and with hot tea her cheeks grew rose-color. She was certainly very pretty, and her drawling Devonshire accent was attractive. But her parentage stuck in my throat and kept me sceptical, when I might otherwise have believed.

Then Georgie took me out to see the town.

"Drusilla will be nicer to her if we leave her to it," he said confidently. "She might like to have her for a companion or something; you never know."

"I think I do know." I smiled a little. "Drusilla must make shift with her legal companion, Georgie."

"Doesn't she want some one to look after old Muffin face?"

"She has some one. Matthew Arnold has an excellent nurse."

We went for a long walk in the hot sun and gazed at the monotonous little round hills and dull valleys which surrounded us. Then I looked at the ponies he had bought for his mother, and criticized them with the frankness of inexperience. In two hours we went back.

"Drusilla can do a lot with a person in two hours," said Georgie hopefully.

"She can, indeed." I spoke with emphasis, as Drusilla's husband.

Opening softly the sitting-room door, I started as I peeped in. Miss Fitzgerald was crouched on the hearth-rug, her head on Drusilla's knee. Drusilla's eyes were full of indignant sympathy, and both had been crying. I closed the door again softly, but Drusilla called me.

"Come in, Martin! Oh, it is a shame, a shame! You mustn't mind him Dolly. She wants me to call her Dolly," quickly reading my thought, "every one does, she says."

Dolly stayed where she was, and sobbed audibly.

"Martin, she says this kind of thing often happens in—in the profession. She says these men get a company together, give one performance, and clear off in the night with the money. She says she thought this would be genuine because the man called it his 'Number 2' Company. She has the advertisement. May I show it to my husband, Dolly?"

Miss Fitzgerald murmured a choked assent. I unfolded "The Stage," and in time, marked with a blue-pencil cross, I found this:

 

Wanted for No. 2 Company, pianist, soubrette, and 2 comedians. No red-nosed comedians or yak-yaks need apply. Wallace Lappin, P. O. Neath, S. W.

 

"What is a yak-yak?" I asked in bewildered tones.

"I don't know," Drusilla said, "and neither does she. I asked her if she thought she might possibly be one, but she says no. She is a soubrette."

"Sparkling comedienne." The soubrette gave another sob before she went on: "He's a fraud! Wanted to get a crowd together, and show one night, then scarper. I've met his sort before."

The ready flow of her professional slang showed how far she had drifted from the parental rectory.

"Poor child!" Drusilla, aged twenty-two, stroked the ruffled brown hair kindly. "She walked three miles across the hills the day before yesterday with the pianist to an inn where she'd heard there were sure to be a lot of people. They thought they might make a little money by playing and singing to the miners, poor things, but they only took—"

"Sixpence," Miss Fitzgerald murmured sadly. "You see we didn't know the wages were paid fortnightly here, and that this was the second week."

"And, besides," Drusilla cried, "the revivalists had been there. Everybody had been converted, and one man told Dolly—what was it he said to you, Dolly?"

"Said he'd given up the ways of sin, and football as well," Miss Fitzgerald said mournfully. "Said that for years he'd been keeping goal for the devil, but he now hoped to play center forward for his Saviour. As if giving a few coppers to us would have made any difference to that! The pianist says he's seen many a crowd bottled in his time, but never such a set of mean brutes as those were."

"Bottling means collecting," my wife explained hastily.

I gazed at Drusilla in amazement. She had apparently taken these disreputable players to her heart as warmly as Georgie had done. In our absence the comedienne had evidently poured out her life's history and had drawn from Drusilla a life's sympathy. A soft heart was all very well, I thought, but there were limits.

And then Georgie burst in.

"Look here!" he cried. "That beggar Lappin's been seen at Cymmer. I'm going over to look for him."

"Georgie!" Drusilla stared at him.

"But what can you do if you find him?" Georgie grinned.

"I'll teach him things if I find him," said he. "I don't suppose I shall have much trouble. I expect he's a soft, flabby brute—the kind of man who doubles up when you look at him."

He stretched out a muscular arm and smiled at it.

"Don't lose your head," said I with necessary warning, "You can't knock people about now-a-days, Georgie, without paying for it. Would your mother like it, do you think, if you stayed in South Wales, on a summons for assault and battery?"

But Georgie smiled again and disappeared.

Presently the pianist, a melancholy, long-haired wreck, joined us, and we heard in plaintive cockney the depressing history of his life.

These two, soubrette and pianist, spoke the jargon of their profession, and we could not always follow them. They spoke of lataris and mendzes; of hamfats and of waxy homos, and of mijari and beyonks. They spoke of the evening when they went jogering to the bevicarse, and Mr. Carlton Delamere, the pianist, told Drusilla, in a burst of unprofessional confidence, that he had expected this, because he was a Jonah. Then he explained to us what a Jonah was. The comedienne called us all "dear" indiscrimi

 

"Miss Fitzgerald sang to us"

 

nately, and with the faintest encouragement she put her arm round Drusilla's waist.

We tried to cheer them up, gave them the best hot lunch the hotel could manage, also champagne—of a kind, and afterward Miss Fitzgerald sang to us in the long empty coffee-room while Mr. Delamere vamped her accompaniments. She had a strong soprano voice, and her songs were of the musical comedies plaintive ditties of the love-affairs of butterflies and bees. I think her repertory held other items, but she sang for Drusilla's benefit, and toward tea-time the spirits of our wandering ministrels rose considerably, and then it was that I saw how little hope there was of the Reverend Fitzgerald welcoming home his prodigal Dolly; for the life held her fast enchained. Obviously she thought and talked and lived only for the "show" of the moment. Now that there was no show, there was still hope.

"I should like to run a little show of my own," said she. "It only wants a tiny capital. With twenty pounds behind me, I could cover the first halls and the first fortnight's salaries and railway fares; and a show always pays, if it's decently run.

"Among the revivalists?" I murmured inquiringly.

She shook her head gravely.

"Not in South Wales. I've been here before with the Blue Bohemians. The miners aren't human. They're wild beasts. There was a row once here in Neath at night. Every miner in the town was drunk, and our men had to fight their way home from the show and look after the girls at the same time. When we got to the inn, the landlord thought we were the mob and wouldn't let us in for ages. The tenor had his head cut open. It's not a nice place."

And then at last we heard Georgie's voice in the hall. He came in, but not alone. A small, sandy man followed him up behind. With a manner half-swaggering, half-deprecatory, he acknowledged the introduction.

"This," said Georgia, pleasantly, "is Mr. Wallace Lappin. He is a little late for his appointment, but better late than never."

Solemnly he introduced him to us all round. Drusilla was agitated, the pianist apprehensive. I was the only person who noticed Miss Dolly Fitzgerald start at the sight of him, and walk quietly over to the window. I noticed, too, that her appearance was a surprise to the stranger. Had they met before?"

"Pleased to meet you," said Mr. Lappin.

He had sharp, anxious eyes and a very deeply-lined face, and his manner became genially intimate at once.

"Did you meet Mr. Lappin in Cymmer?" I asked gravely, turning to Georgie.

He smiled.

"Yes, I found him and—well, he decided we'd travel back together. Mr. Lappin is going to—well, he thought he'd like to explain."

Drusilla sat down and glanced uneasily around.

The sparkling comedienne was still looking out of the window. Georgie cast a longing look in that direction, but he did not join her.

I think somehow that Mr. Wallace Lappin was used to explaining things. And the pianist shared my views, for he told me afterward that he could tell the tale better than any one he'd ever met.

"I'm sorry I've been so unlucky," he began with easy fluency. "I booked the hall and billed the town and the crowd didn't turn up. I couldn't show with one soubrette and a pianist, now, could I?"

I was amazed at the man's assurance.

"You ought," said I sternly, "to have faced the thing honestly instead of running away, and you might at least have paid their fares home again."

"Now, how could I?" asked Mr. Lappin pathetically, "without money? I hadn't a penny in the world the day before yesterday."

"In any other, business," said I gravely, "it is considered criminal to start without capital. In yours it seems—"

"But don't you understand," Lappin said persuasively, "if I'd had a bit of luck, and if the crowd had turned up, I should have taken good money here, and paid off at the end of the week right enough. I've got no luck just now. I thought perhaps it was my name, so I changed it. But this one's no better. I expect you know me pretty well by my old one," he finished modestly.

"What was it?" Drusilla asked.

"Hall Smilo." He spoke with simple pride. In the window the dark-haired comedienne laughed softly to herself.

"I ran the halls under that name," he said, with a large wave of his hand. "I was touring in the Midlands before that with my wife—'Madame Merillian's Choir,' we called it. It was in Lent, you see, and it's always as well to run your show as a Choir in Lent. Gives a pious tone to your bills."

I gasped.

"If I had thirty pounds," said Mr. Lappin dreamily, "I'd run such a little show as you've never seen. I'd wake up the Midlands as no one else has ever waked 'em up. I would so."

I thought he was probably right, but made no comment.

"I'd get out of this first. It's a bald pitch; but I'd coin money in some towns I know of, if I was sure of my halls and a few weeks' salaries."

I wondered idly, as I looked at him, if he was really the scoundrel I had thought him, or merely the wandering and improvident minstrel he pretended to be. An old proverb floated into my mind as I gazed into his keen eyes: "Take the washing off the hedges; the actors are coming to town."

But Mr. Lappin construed my silence to his own advantage.

"If you want to put a little money into a dead sure thing," he said graciously, "here's your chance. The pianist and soubrette are ready. I am a humorist myself—refined humorist and ventriloquist, and the best mimic in the provinces. You'll get your money back a hundredfold. It's the chance of a lifetime."

I listened to his twanging voice and looked at the vamping pianist who was a Jonah, and wondered at the man's hopefulness. If I had seen more of his profession, I should have expected that glowing and ever-constant hope of success which marks his kind. Eagerly he waited for my reply, but I made none.

Georgie, however, had been listening keenly and, as it afterward turned out, to some purpose. He turned and spoke to Drusilla in a low voice:

"Did you do what I asked, Drusilla?"

"Yes." She spoke gravely.

"Any good?" He glanced compassionately at the drooping head of the girl in the window.

"No good at all, my dear boy. She loves the life. You must give it up, Georgie. She wouldn't for worlds. And perhaps it isn't such a pity as you think." Drusilla glanced quickly at the depressed Dolly. "You see she does sing well, doesn't she, and there wouldn't be anything else so very likely to suit—well, to suit her peculiar style, would there, to look at it in a really sensible and practical light?"

"I suppose not," Georgie said reluctantly.

He turned quickly to Lappin.

"Look here," he said. "If I were to finance you, what guarantee could you give me that you were honest?"

Lappin's face lighted up; he looked less of a scoundrel when he was happy, I found. But perhaps he is not alone in this.

"Guarantee?" he said. "I'll write out a formal agreement, and have it legally stamped."

The pianist sniffed. "I've had stamped agreements before," he murmured with meaning, "and no six and eightpence for a lawyer to enforce 'em."

"How shall I know," Georgie went on firmly, ignoring the dejected Jonah, "that directly we're gone you won't make yourself scarce with the money? How am I to know that you won't blow it all in in beer and scoot?"

There was a momentary silence, and Miss Dolly Fitzgerald turned from the window with a laugh.

"I think I can guarantee that he won't do that," said she softly.

With one accord we turned and stared at her. Lappin studied her face with some anxiety, perhaps appeal.

She came up to Drusilla with her pretty, timid smile.

"I didn't know," she said. "I suppose you'll all think I've been crying and telling the tale to take you in, but, indeed, I haven't. I didn't know. I thought he was doing the halls as Hall Smilo, and I'd never heard of Wallace Lappin. I haven't seen him since the Choir dried up. I really didn't know."

"The Choir?" Drusilla asked feebly,

The comedienne laughed. "Madame Merillian's Choir," said she. "I was Madame Merillian—then. I've changed my name, too—for luck."

She turned to Georgie, who had grown very red.

"You're a good chap," she said. "You'll give us a helping hand, won't you? He's as straight as most of them, and a good deal straighter than some. He's speaking the truth now. If you start us, I'll guarantee that the show will pay. I'm a jolly good business manager."

I gazed helplessly at her animated face. Her stupid eyes had grown keen and practical. Lappin nodded friendly approval, Georgie stared, Drusilla was silent.

The comedienne held out her hand appealingly.

"It's all true, dear—every word of it," she said, "except the clergyman. That's an old wheeze, and I was sorry directly I had used it. My father kept a pub in Exeter, but he burst up. He was dropped on, for selling the kind of beer—well, the kind he did sell. You do believe, me don't you? You've been so nice to me, I'd rather you'd believe me."

"Oh!" Drusilla took her offered hand with a bewildered air. "Of course I believe you," she said, her instinct to be kind under any circumstances prompting her words, "but this man?" She pointed to Lappin. "Who is he?"

"He is my husband," said the sparkling comedienne, with a sigh.

 

Once on our way back to Marybeach and Matthew Arnold, Drusilla and I looked at each other and laughed. Then I stooped to revenge.

"It is nice to think," I murmured, "that in times of trouble our Georgie always turns to us."

She flushed.

"Don't be unkind, Martin. Georgie really is—I do hope those people won't lead him into anything rash and disreputable. He always thought he could sing, you know, and they want a tenor. Suppose—"

"Not " said I promptly. "Georgie's interest in the King's Own cooled off when he found the girl was married to the other wandering minstrel. He'll lend that little ruffian thirty pounds, and they'll all vanish out of his life forever. Perhaps it'll be a lesson to him. Young idiot! Well, Drusilla, what's the matter now?" She was frowning anxiously at the sunny landscape.

At my question she turned and sighed.

"I am beginning to think," said she, "that perhaps we were not quite wise in making Georgie Matthew Arnold's godfather. He is so—"

She hesitated.

"Yes," said I, "he is."

And when you come to think of it, he was.