ed me. 'Oh, about the same as usual,' I told him.
'You won't be offended at my taking it away with me this evening?' he
asked. 'Not in the least,' I answered; 'you'll get it on the top of a
four-wheeled cab.' We called in a couple of men, and I helped them down
with it, and confoundedly heavy it was. 'I shall send round to Jong's
for the other half on Monday morning,' he said, speaking with his head
through the cab window, 'and explain it to him.' 'Do,' I answered;
'he'll understand.'

"I'm sorry I'm going away so early in the morning," concluded the little
gentleman. "I'd give back Jong ten per cent. of his money to see his
face when he enters the studio."

Everybody laughed; but after the little gentleman was gone, the subject
cropped up again.

"If I wake sufficiently early," remarked one, "I shall find an excuse
to look in myself at eight o'clock. Jong's face will certainly be worth
seeing."

"Rather rough both on him and Sir George," observed another.

"Oh, he hasn't really done anything of the kind," chimed in old
Deleglise in his rich, sweet voice. "He made that all up. It's just his
fun; he's full of humour."

"I am inclined to think that would be his idea of a joke," asserted the
first speaker.

Old Deleglise would not hear of it; but a week or two later I noticed an
addition to old Deleglise's studio furniture in the shape of a handsome
old carved cabinet twelve feet high.

"He really had done it," explained old Deleglise, speaking in a whisper,
though only he and I were present. "Of course, it was only his fun; but
it might have been misunderstood. I thought it better to put the thing
straight. I shall get the money back from him when he returns. A most
amusing little man!"

Old Deleglise possessed a house in Gower Street which fell vacant. One
of his guests, a writer of poetical drama, was a man who three months
after he had earned a thousand pounds never had a penny with which
to bless himself. They are dying out, these careless, good-natured,
conscienceless Bohemians; but quarter of a century ago they still
lingered in Alsatian London. Turned out of his lodgings by a Philistine
landlord, his sole possession in the wide world, two acts of a drama,
for which he had already been paid, the problem of his future, though
it troubled him but little, became acute to his friends. Old Deleglise,
treating the matter as a joke, pretending not to know who was the
landlord, suggested he should apply to the a