?" said Mr. Lancelot (Ginger)
Kemp.

"I'm going to tell you all about myself," said Sally, "not because I
think it will interest you..."

"Oh, it will!"

"Not, I say, because I think it will interest you..."

"It will, really."

Sally looked at him coldly.

"Is this a duet?" she inquired, "or have I the floor?"

"I'm awfully sorry."

"Not, I repeat for the third time, because I think It will interest you,
but because if I do you won't have any excuse for not telling me your
life-history, and you wouldn't believe how inquisitive I am. Well, in
the first place, I live in America. I'm over here on a holiday. And it's
the first real holiday I've had in three years--since I left home, in
fact." Sally paused. "I ran away from home," she said.

"Good egg!" said Ginger Kemp.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, quite right. I bet you were quite right."

"When I say home," Sally went on, "it was only a sort of imitation
home, you know. One of those just-as-good homes which are never as
satisfactory as the real kind. My father and mother both died a good
many years ago. My brother and I were dumped down on the reluctant
doorstep of an uncle."

"Uncles," said Ginger Kemp, feelingly, "are the devil. I've got an...
but I'm interrupting you."

"My uncle was our trustee. He had control of all my brother's money
and mine till I was twenty-one. My brother was to get his when he was
twenty-five. My poor father trusted him blindly, and what do you think
happened?"

"Good Lord! The blighter embezzled the lot?"

"No, not a cent. Wasn't it extraordinary! Have you ever heard of a
blindly trusted uncle who was perfectly honest? Well, mine was. But the
trouble was that, while an excellent man to have looking after one's
money, he wasn't a very lovable character. He was very hard. Hard!
He was as hard as--well, nearly as hard as this seat. He hated poor
Fill..."

"Phil?"

"I broke it to you just now that my brother's name was Fillmore."

"Oh, your brother. Oh, ah, yes."

"He was always picking on poor Fill. And I'm bound to say that Fill
rather laid himself out as what you might call a pickee. He was always
getting into trouble. One day, about three years ago, he was expelled
from Harvard, and my uncle vowed he would have nothing more to do with
him. So I said, if Fill left, I would leave. And, as this seemed to be
my uncle's idea of a large evening, no objection was raised, and Fill
and I departed. We went to New York, a