Short Fiction

the immediate future. Human nature will remain the same, but a wider scope may conceivably be given to its interests and range of ideas, even among the poorer classes of the community.”

Daily Paper

Scene⁠—Clare Market, Saturday evening. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hooper discovered shopping.

Mrs. H.	Well meanin’, no doubt of it, but hawful hignorant. I was chatting discursive like to ’er about them early Phoenicians what you read of in the Encyclopedyer, an’ I could tell she didn’t know but what they was a sort of spring cabbidge. Hignorant I calls ’er.
Mrs. B.	Well, that’s better nor some of them what’s stuck up on the little learnin’ they ’ave got. That there Mrs. Smithers told me this mornin’ she was taking ’ome the ’ebdomadal washing. Just because ’er ’husband bin an’ took in the Century Dictionary there’s no ’olding with the words she uses.
Mrs. H.	Stuck up cat. Semper Haugustus I calls ’er, like what them Kaisers used to put in their titles, in the ’Oly Roming Hempire, what Mr. Bryce writes of. Not that she’d know what it meant, seeing as she aint never read no ’Undred Best Books like what I’ve been accustomed to.
Mrs. B	And ’er own sister so badly circumstanced too! That ’usband of ’ers spends all ’is time an’ wages travellin’ about to mooseums an’ galleries, readin’ of Hassyrian Hieroglyphicses, and ’is pore wife an’ children don’t see so much as a pennyworf of Dante from week’s end to week’s end. Talk about neglect! I lent ’em some back numbers of the Revoo d’ doo Mondes, and they was that grateful.
Mrs. H.	There now. And that Mrs. Smithers ’olding ’erself like a Doge of Venice. It’s my opinion, I sez to ’er, that your spellin’s no better than it should be, an’ as for hinformation, why my youngest boy kows more about the ’yksos Dinnersty in Hegypt an’ the Harian Schism an’ Solar Mythses an’ the Hitalian Re-nuisance than ever you’ll get to know if you lives to be a Centurian. “Mrs. ’Ooper,” she sez to me, “you’re no linguist.” After a remark like that I ’ad to ostrichise ’er from my acquaintance.
Mrs. B.	Very proper, my dear. Same with me an’ that Mrs. O’Dowd what borrowed my Goldin Legend and aint never returned it. “Where does yer ’ope to go to,” I arst ’er. “Not to Bubastis, I ’opes,” sez she, “ ’cos I should be sure to meet you there,” meaning that cimitery place where they hembalmed dead cats. “Mrs. O’Dowd,” I sez, “you may consider yourself a Hegyptoligist, but it’s my opinion you’re more fit to in’abit a Like Dwelling.” Since which there’s been a glacial hepoch between us.
Mrs. H.	An’ no wonder. Well, my dear, I must be after getting some pig’s trotters; my ’usband do like a ungulate relish with ’is supper.
	Exeunt severally.

Reginald

I did it⁠—I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops’ garden-party against his will.

We all make mistakes occasionally.

“They know you’re here, and they’ll think it so funny if you don’t go. And I want particularly to be in with Mrs. McKillop just now.”

“I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a prospective wife for Wumples⁠—or a husband, is it?” (Reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, other than sartorial.) “And I am expected to undergo social martyrdom to suit the connubial exigencies”⁠—

“Reginald! It’s nothing of the kind, only I’m sure Mrs. McKillop would be pleased if I brought you. Young men of your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at her garden-parties.”

“Should be at a premium in heaven,” remarked Reginald complacently.

“There will be very few of you there, if that is what you mean. But seriously, there won’t be any great strain upon your powers of endurance; I promise you that you shan’t have to play croquet, or talk to the Archdeacon’s wife, or do anything that is likely to bring on physical prostration. You can just wear your sweetest clothes and moderately amiable expression, and eat chocolate-creams with the appetite of a blasé parrot. Nothing more is demanded of you.”

Reginald shut his eyes. “There will be the exhaustingly up-to-date young women who will ask me if I have seen San Toy; a less progressive grade who will yearn to hear about the Diamond Jubilee⁠—the historic event, not the horse. With a little encouragement, they will inquire if I saw the Allies march into Paris. Why are women so fond of raking up the past? They’re as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you’ve ceased to wear it.”

“I’ll order lunch for one o’clock; that will give you two and a half hours to dress in.”

Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew that my point was gained. He was debating what tie would go with which waistcoat.

Even then I had my misgivings.

---

During the drive to the McKillops’ Reginald was possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops’ lawn, I established him near a seductive dish of marrons glacés, and as far from the Archdeacon’s wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he had seen San Toy.

It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been having quite an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had promised to lend her The Eternal City and my recipe for rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to offer a kind home for her third Persian kitten, when I perceived, out of the corner of my eye, that Reginald was not where I had left him, and that the