Merely Mary Ann

after her lights-she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings-and I only hate her the more for it.'

'I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same mistaken sense of duty,' said Peter acutely. 'Thanks; think I'll try one of my cigars. I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out. Yes, here it is; won't you try one?'

'No, thanks, I prefer my pipe.'

'It's the same old meerschaum, I see,' said Peter.

'The same old meerschaum,' repeated Lancelot, with a little sigh.

Peter lit a cigar, and they sat and puffed in silence.

'Dear me!' said Peter suddenly; 'I can almost fancy we're back in our German garret, up the ninety stairs, can't you?'

'No,' said Lancelot sadly, looking round as if in search of something; 'I miss the dreams.'

'And I,' said Peter, striving to speak cheerfully, 'I see a dog too much.'

'Yes,' said Lancelot, with a melancholy laugh. 'When you funked becoming a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you.'

'What? you called him Peter?'

'No, Beethoven!'

'Beethoven! Really?'

'Really. Here, Beethoven!'

The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully towards Lancelot's face.

Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice. He didn't know whether he was pleased, or touched, or angry.

'You started to tell me about those twenty thousand shillings,' he said.

'Didn't I tell you? On the expectations of my triumph, I lived extravagantly, like a fool, joined a club, and took up my quarters there. When I began to realise the struggle that lay before me, I took chambers; then I took rooms; now I'm in lodgings. The more I realised it, the less rent I paid. I only go to the club for my letters now. I won't have them come here. I'm living incognito.'

'That's taking fame by the forelock, indeed! Then by what name must I ask for you next time? For I'm not to be shaken off.'

'Lancelot.'

'Lancelot what?'

'Only Lancelot! Mr. Lancelot.'

'Why, that's like your Mary Ann!'

'So it is!' he laughed, more bitterly than cordially; 'it never struck me before. Yes, we are a pair.'

'How did you stumble on this place?'

'I didn't stumble. Deliberate, intelligent selection. You see, it's the next best thing to Piccadilly. You just cross Waterloo Bridge, and there you are at the centre, five minutes from all the clubs. The natives have not yet risen to the idea.'

'You mean the rent,' laughed Peter. 'You're as canny and careful as a Scotch professor. I think it's simply grand the way you've beaten out those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts. I should have melted them years ago. I believe you have got some musical genius, after all.'

'You overrate my abilities,' said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments. 'You must deduct the Thalers I made in exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful lot, and you take a hansom on the strength of it.'

'Well, I haven't torn up that cheque yet--'

'Peter!' said Lancelot, his flash of gaiety dying away, 'I tell you these things as a friend, not as a beggar. If you look upon me as the second, I cease to be the first.'

'But, man, I owe you the money; and if it will enable you to hold out a little longer-why, in heaven's name, shouldn't you--?'

'You don't owe me the money at all; I made no bargain with you; I am not a money-lender.'

'Pack dich zum Henker!' growled Peter, with a comical grimace. 'Was für a casuist! What a swindler you'd make! I wonder you have the face to deny the debt. Well, and how did you leave Frau Sauer-Kraut?' he said, deeming it prudent to sheer off the subject.

'Fat as a Christmas turkey.'

'Of a German sausage. The extraordinary things that woman stuffed herself with. Chunks of fat, stewed apples, Kartoffel salad-all mixed up in one plate, as in a dustbin.'

'Don't! You make my gorge rise. Ach Himmel! to think that this nation should be musical! O Music, heavenly maid, how much garlic I have endured for thy sake!'

'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Peter, putting down his whisky that he might throw himself freely back in the easy-chair and roar.

'Oh that garlic!' he said, panting. 'No wonder they smoked so much in Leipsic. Even so they couldn't keep the reek out of the staircases. Still, it's a great country is Germany. Our house does a tremendous business in German patents.'

'A great country? A land of barbarians rather. How can a people be civilised that eats jam with its meat?'

'Bravo, Lancelot! You're in lovely form to-night. You seem to go a hundred miles out of your way to come the truly British. First it was oil-now it's jam. There was that aristocratic flash in your eye, too, that look of supreme disdain which brings on riots in Trafalgar Square. Behind the patriotic, the national note: 'How can a people be civilised that eats jam with its meat?' I heard the deeper, the oligarchic accent: 'How can a people be enfranchised that eats meat with its fingers?' Ah, you are right! How you do hate the poor! What bores they are! You aristocrats-the products of centuries of culture, comfort, and cocksureness-will never rid yourselves of your conviction that you are the backbone of England-no, not though that backbone were picked clean of every scrap of flesh by the rats of Radicalism.'

'What in the devil are you talking about now?' demanded Lancelot. 'You seem to me to go a hundred miles out of your way to twit me with my poverty and my breeding. One would almost think you were anxious to convince me of the poverty of your breeding.'

'Oh, a thousand pardons!' ejaculated Peter, blushing violently. 'But, good heavens, old chap! There's your hot temper again. You surely wouldn't suspect me, of all people in the world, of meaning anything personal? I'm talking of you as a class. Contempt is in your blood-and quite right! We're such snobs, we deserve it. Why d'ye think I ever took to you as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate sonatas and I had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not a bit of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify my historic sense-like an old building. You are picturesque. You stand to me for all the good old ideals, including the pride which we are beginning to see is deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious kind of pride when one looks into it. Apparently it's based on the fact that your family has lived on the nation for generations. And yet you won't take my cheque, which is your own. Now don't swear-I know one mustn't analyse things, or the world would come to pieces, so I always vote Tory.'

'Then I shall have to turn Radical,' grumbled Lancelot.

'Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of poverty,' retorted Peter. 'There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do it to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear Lancelot, you are like the king you look-you can do no wrong. You are picturesque. Pass the whisky.'

Lancelot smiled, his handsome brow serene once more. He murmured, 'Don't talk rot,' but inwardly he was not displeased at Peter's allegiance, half mocking though he knew it.

'Therefore, my dear chap,' resumed Peter, sipping his whisky and water, 'to return to our lambs, I bow to your patrician prejudices in favour of forks. But your patriotic prejudices are on a different level. There, I am on the same ground as you, and I vow I see nothing inherently superior in the British combination of beef and beetroot, to the German amalgam of lamb and jam.'

'Damn lamb and jam,' burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical look: 'There's rhyme, as well as reason.