can manage it."

Miss Maud waltzed playfully around the room, her hands above her head.
She put her head out of the door and called into the bar.

"Milly, Mr. Burton's taking me to the theatre to-night. Why don't you
get Mr. Waddington to come along? We can both get a night off if you
make up to the governor for a bit."

"I'll try," was the eager reply,--"that is, if Mr. Waddington's
agreeable."

Maud came back to her place by the piano. She was a plump young lady
with a pink and white complexion, which suffered slightly from lack of
exercise and fresh air and over-use of powder. Her hair was yellower
than her friend's, but it also owed some part of its beauty to
artificial means. In business hours she was attired in an exceedingly
tight-fitting black dress, disfigured in many places by the accidents of
her profession.

"You are a dear, Mr. Burton," she declared. "I wonder what your wife
would say, though?" she added, a little coyly.

"Not seeing much of Ellen just lately," Burton replied. "I'm living up
in town alone."

"Oh!" she remarked. "Mr. Burton, I'm ashamed of you! What does that
mean, I wonder? You men!" she went on, with a sigh. "One has to be so
careful. You are such deceivers, you know! What's the attraction?"

"You!" he whispered.

"What a caution you are!" she exclaimed. "I like that, too, after not
coming near me for months! What are you looking so scared about, all of
a sudden?"

Burton was looking through the garishly papered walls of the
public-house sitting-room, out into the world. He was certainly a
little paler.

"Haven't I been in for months?" he asked softly.

She stared at him.

"Well, I suppose you know!" she retorted. "Pretty shabby I thought it
of you, too, after coming in and making such a fuss as you used to
pretty well every afternoon. I don't like friends that treat you like
that. Makes you careful when they come round again. I'd like to know
what you've been doing?"

"Ah!" he said, "you will never know that. Perhaps I myself shall never
know that really again. Get me a whiskey and soda, Maud. I want a
drink."

"I should say you did!" the young woman declared, pertly. "Sitting
there, looking struck all of a heap! Some woman, I expect, you've been
gone on. You men are all the same. I've no patience with you--not a
bit. If it wasn't," she added, taking down the whiskey bottle from the
shelf, "that life's so precious dull without you, I wouldn't have a
thing to say to y