't care who says you can."

He paused, and appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of the distant
Matterhorn, then clad in its rosy robe of evening. There was a vein of
poetry in Henry, not uncommon among cooks and waiters. The perpetual
atmosphere of hot food I am inclined to think favourable to the growth of
the softer emotions. One of the most sentimental men I ever knew kept a
ham-and-beef shop just off the Farringdon Road. In the early morning he
could be shrewd and business-like, but when hovering with a knife and
fork above the mingled steam of bubbling sausages and hissing
peas-pudding, any whimpering tramp with any impossible tale of woe could
impose upon him easily.

"But the rummiest go I ever recollect in connection with a baby,"
continued Henry after a while, his gaze still fixed upon the distant snow-
crowned peaks, "happened to me at Warwick in the Jubilee year. I'll
never forget that."

"Is it a proper story," I asked, "a story fit for me to hear?"

On consideration, Henry saw no harm in it, and told it to me accordingly.

* * * * *

He came by the 'bus that meets the 4.52. He'd a handbag and a sort of
hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. He wouldn't let the Boots
touch the hamper, but carried it up into his bedroom himself. He carried
it in front of him by the handles, and grazed his knuckles at every
second step. He slipped going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked
his head a rattling good thump against the balustrade; but he never let
go that hamper--only swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous
and excited, but one gets used to nervous and excited people in hotels.
Whether a man's running away from a thing, or running after a thing, he
stops at a hotel on his way; and so long as he looks as if he could pay
his bill one doesn't trouble much about him. But this man interested me:
he was so uncommonly young and innocent-looking. Besides, it was a dull
hole of a place after the sort of jobs I'd been used to; and when you've
been doing nothing for three months but waiting on commercial gents as
are having an exceptionally bad season, and spoony couples with guide-
books, you get a bit depressed, and welcome any incident, however slight,
that promises to be out of the common.

I followed him up into his room, and asked him if I could do anything for
him. He flopped the hamper on the bed with a sigh of relief, took off
his hat, wiped his head with his handkerchief,