terday."

"I hope I shall live to see it," said Peter sceptically.

"I hope you will," said Lancelot sharply.

"None of my family ever lived beyond ninety," said Peter, shaking his
head dolefully; "and then, my heart is not so good as it might be."

"It certainly isn't!" cried poor Lancelot. "But everybody hits a chap
when he's down."

He turned his head away, striving to swallow the lump that would rise
to his throat. He had a sense of infinite wretchedness and loneliness.

"Oh, poor old chap; is it so bad as all that?" Peter's somewhat
strident voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand
affectionately on Lancelot's tumbled hair. "You know I believe in you
with all my soul. I never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I
know too well that's what keeps you back? Come, come, old fellow.
Can't I persuade you to write rot? One must keep the pot boiling, you
know. You turn out a dozen popular ballads, and the coin'll follow
your music as the rats did the pied piper's. Then, if you have any
ambition left, you kick away the ladder by which you mounted, and stand
on the heights of art."

"Never!" cried Lancelot. "It would degrade me in my own eyes. I'd
rather starve; and you can't shake them off--the first impression is
everything; they would always be remembered against me," he added,
after a pause.

"Motives mixed," reflected Peter. "That's a good sign." Aloud he
said, "Well, you think it over. This is a practical world, old man; it
wasn't made for dreamers. And one of the first dreams that you've got
to wake from is the dream that anybody connected with the stage can be
relied on from one day to the next. They gas for the sake of gassing,
or they tell you pleasant lies out of mere goodwill, just as they call
for your drinks. Their promises are beautiful bubbles, on a basis of
soft soap and made to 'bust.'"

"You grow quite eloquent," said Lancelot, with a wan smile.

"Eloquent! There's more in me than you've yet found out. Now, then!
Give us your hand that you'll chuck art, and we'll drink to your
popular ballad--hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should be
without it."

Lancelot flushed. "I was just going to have some tea. I think it's
five o'clock," he murmured.

"The very thing I'm dying for," cried Peter energetically; "I'm as
parched as a pea." Inwardly he was shocked to find the stream of
whisky run dry.

So Lancelot rang the bell, and Mary Ann came up wi