hat about going to America, just as if it was the
easiest thing in the world, only you couldn't be bothered to do it,
kind of got me going. And to think I could be there right now if I
wasn't a bonehead!"

"A bonehead?"

"A simp. I'm all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but
above that I'm reinforced concrete."

Freddie groped for her meaning.

"Do you mean you've made a bloomer of some kind?"

"I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest
of the company went back home, and now I've got to stick."

"Rush of jolly old professional engagements, what?"

Nelly laughed bitterly.

"You're a bad guesser. No, they haven't started to fight over me yet.
I'm at liberty, as they say in the _Era_."

"But, my dear old thing," said Freddie earnestly, "if you've nothing
to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to say,
home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world. There's
nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I remember
staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year before last
and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I
raved--absolutely gibbered--for the sight of the merry old metrop.
Sometimes I'd wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany,
and, by Jove, when I found I wasn't I howled like a dog! You take my
tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat."

"Which line?"

"How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well ...
well ... I've never been on any of them, so it's rather hard to say.
But I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies
swear by the White Star. But I should imagine you can't go far wrong,
whichever you pick. They're all pretty ripe, I fancy."

"Which of them is giving free trips? That's the point."

"Eh? Oh!" Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep
consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost
forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as
himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat.
It was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl
and in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What
mattered was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a
blow. He hated the idea of anyone being hard up.

"I say!" he said. "Are you broke?"

Nelly laughed.

"Am I? If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole i