s I promised Miss
Denison I would. You ain't bad for an amateur. You gotta lot to learn,
but it's in you. What it comes to is that I can fix you up in the
four-a-day, if you'll take thirty-five per. I can't do better than
that, and I wouldn't have done that if the little lady hadn't of kep'
after me. Take it or leave it. What do you say?'

'I'll take it,' said Gussie, huskily. 'Thank you.'

In the passage outside, Gussie gurgled with joy and slapped me on the
back. 'Bertie, old man, it's all right. I'm the happiest man in New
York.'

'Now what?'

'Well, you see, as I was telling you when Abe came in, Ray's father
used to be in the profession. He was before our time, but I remember
hearing about him--Joe Danby. He used to be well known in London before
he came over to America. Well, he's a fine old boy, but as obstinate as
a mule, and he didn't like the idea of Ray marrying me because I wasn't
in the profession. Wouldn't hear of it. Well, you remember at Oxford I
could always sing a song pretty well; so Ray got hold of old Riesbitter
and made him promise to come and hear me rehearse and get me bookings
if he liked my work. She stands high with him. She coached me for
weeks, the darling. And now, as you heard him say, he's booked me in
the small time at thirty-five dollars a week.'

I steadied myself against the wall. The effects of the restoratives
supplied by my pal at the hotel bar were beginning to work off, and I
felt a little weak. Through a sort of mist I seemed to have a vision of
Aunt Agatha hearing that the head of the Mannering-Phippses was about
to appear on the vaudeville stage. Aunt Agatha's worship of the family
name amounts to an obsession. The Mannering-Phippses were an
old-established clan when William the Conqueror was a small boy going
round with bare legs and a catapult. For centuries they have called
kings by their first names and helped dukes with their weekly rent; and
there's practically nothing a Mannering-Phipps can do that doesn't blot
his escutcheon. So what Aunt Agatha would say--beyond saying that it
was all my fault--when she learned the horrid news, it was beyond me to
imagine.

'Come back to the hotel, Gussie,' I said. 'There's a sportsman there
who mixes things he calls "lightning whizzers". Something tells me I
need one now. And excuse me for one minute, Gussie. I want to send a
cable.'

It was clear to me by now that Aunt Agatha had picked the wrong man for
this job of disent