, and young clergymen talking about business. Because, of
course, the Rasselyer-Brown residence was the kind of cultivated home
where people of education and taste are at liberty to talk about things
they don't know, and to utter freely ideas that they haven't got. It
was only now and again, when one of the professors from the college
across the avenue came booming into the room, that the whole
conversation was pulverized into dust under the hammer of accurate
knowledge.

The whole process was what was called, by those who understood such
things, a _salon_. Many people said that Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's
afternoons at home were exactly like the delightful _salons_ of the
eighteenth century: and whether the gatherings were or were not
_salons_ of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown, under whose care certain favoured guests dropped
quietly into the back alcove of the dining-room, did his best to put
the gathering on a par with the best saloons of the twentieth.

Now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack moment in the
social life of the City. The Grand Opera had sung itself into a huge
deficit and closed. There remained nothing of it except the efforts of
a committee of ladies to raise enough money to enable Signor Puffi to
leave town, and the generous attempt of another committee to gather
funds in order to keep Signor Pasti in the City. Beyond this, opera was
dead, though the fact that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it
had been the year before showed that public interest in music was
increasing. It was indeed a singularly trying time of the year. It was
too early to go to Europe; and too late to go to Bermuda. It was too
warm to go south, and yet still too cold to go north. In fact, one was
almost compelled to stay at home--which was dreadful.

As a result Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her three hundred friends moved
backwards and forwards on Plutoria Avenue, seeking novelty in vain.
They washed in waves of silk from tango teas to bridge afternoons. They
poured in liquid avalanches of colour into crowded receptions, and they
sat in glittering rows and listened to lectures on the enfranchisement
of the female sex. But for the moment all was weariness.

Now it happened, whether by accident or design, that just at this
moment of general _ennui_ Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her three hundred
friends first heard of the presence in the city of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, the
celebrated Orien