ell
you."

"Gammon!" grunted Mr. Doss, with a dissatisfied air. "Did you see her
as the 'Rabbit Queen,' sir? My! the patience that woman displayed in
the training of them little furry animals would have astonished you.
Struck the line, sir, out of her own 'ed! 'I'm going, Samuel,' she
said, 'to supply a want.' 'You!' I says. 'Me!' says she; 'they have
got their serpents,' she says, 'and their ducks, and their pigeons
and their kangaroos,' 'What's their void?' said I. 'Rabbits,' she
says, and there you are!"

"Saidie, why don't you sit down? We will have some supper directly,"
said Bella.

"Oh, my dear, I'm dying for a drink!" cried Miss Blackall, flinging
herself in an attitude more easy than graceful into an armchair.

Bella opened the chiffonier and produced glasses and a spirit stand.

"Saves the trouble of ringing for the servant," she said archly to
Meynell.

Chetwynd could fairly have groaned; and when his wife put the climax
upon everything by drinking out of her sister's glass he could
contain himself no longer. "I never saw you touch spirits before," he
said, determined that his friend should know that his wife was an
abstemious woman.

"Ah," she said lightly, "there are lots of things you never saw me
do, Jack, which I am capable of, all the same." Whereupon Saidie
burst out laughing as at some prodigious joke.

"Good for you, Bella! All right, dear! I'm not one to tell tales out
of school."

"Are you a married man, sir, may I ask?"

Doss put his thumbs under his arm-pits and looked scrutinisingly into
Meynell's face. "I should say not."

"No, I'm a bachelor, and likely to continue one."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Doss sentimentally, "I don't know nothing
jollier than courting time. Such little ordinary things seem sweet
like, then."

"Hark at the old girl," chuckled Doss.

"You can't kidd me, Doss. You know it, too. I think of our own
billing and cooing, sir--his and mine. I was not a draw in those
days; the last turn in the bill at the "Middlesex" was about my mark,
and Doss, he hadn't risen, neither. We used to walk 'ome that lovin'
up Drury Lane, and Doss, he would say, 'fish, Tilda,' and I would
say, 'if you could fancy a bit, Sam.' And in he would pop for two
penny slices and chips. And eat--lor', how we did eat. When I look
back on that fish, sometimes I could cry. Money and fame ain't
everythink in the world, believe me, they ain't. You may be 'appy in
your 'umbleness."

All this was