ouder--as I prepared to
follow him.

"Mere dripping!" said the artist in cookery, with a regal wave of the
hand.

Had I felt sure I was included, I should of course have resented the
phrase.

THE MAN WITH A NOSE

"I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived
in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning."

"My nose has been the curse of my life."

The other man started.

They had not spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on
that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards
Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted
out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous
pale green--the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay
black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a
coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone
thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace loomed large
and black, their blackness pierced irregularly by luminous windows.
Above, starlight.

Both men had been silent, lost apparently in their own thoughts, mere
dim black figures to each other, until one had seen fit to become a
voice also, with this confidence.

"Yes," he said, after an interval, "my nose has always stood in my way,
always."

The second man had scarcely seemed to notice the first remark, but now
he peered through the night at his interlocutor. It was a little man
he saw, with face turned towards him.

"I see nothing wrong with your nose."

"If it were luminous you might," said the first speaker. "However, I
will illuminate it."

He fumbled with something in his pocket, then held this object in his
hand. There was a scratch, a streak of greenish phosphorescent light,
and then all the world beyond became black, as a fusee vesta flared.

There was silence for the space of a minute. An impressive pause.

"Well?" said the man with the nose, putting his heel on the light.

"I have seen worse," said the second man.

"I doubt it," said the man with the nose; "and even so, it is poor
comfort. Did you notice the shape? the size? the colour? Like
Snowdon, it has a steep side and a gentle slope. The size is
preposterous: my face is like a hen-house built behind a portico. And
the tints!"

"It is not all red," said the second man, "anyhow."

"No, there is purple, and blue, '_lapis lazuli_, blue as a vein over
the Madonna's breast,' a