t Jane, but that wasn't our
fault), "do you know, Jane, I think you're an uncommonly nice girl,"
and we said "click," and dug her in the ribs with our elbow, and then
chucked her under the chin. The whole thing seemed to fall flat. There
was nobody there to laugh or applaud. We wished we hadn't done it. It
seemed stupid when you came to think of it. We began to feel frightened.
The business wasn't going as we expected; but we screwed up our courage
and went on.

We put on the customary expression of comic imbecility and beckoned the
girl to us. We have never seen this fail on the stage.

But this girl seemed made wrong. She got behind the sofa and screamed
"Help!"

We have never known them to do this on the stage, and it threw us out in
our plans. We did not know exactly what to do. We regretted that we
had ever begun this job and heartily wished ourselves out of it. But it
appeared foolish to pause then, when we were more than half-way through,
and we made a rush to get it over.

We chivvied the girl round the sofa and caught her near the door and
kissed her. She scratched our face, yelled police, murder, and fire, and
fled from the room.

Our friend came in almost immediately. He said:

"I say, J., old man, are you drunk?"

We told him no, that we were only a student of the drama. His wife then
entered in a towering passion. She didn't ask us if we were drunk. She
said:

"How dare you come here in this state!"

We endeavored unsuccessfully to induce her to believe that we were
sober, and we explained that our course of conduct was what was always
pursued on the stage.

She said she didn't care what was done on the stage, it wasn't going
to be pursued in her house; and that if her husband's friends couldn't
behave as gentlemen they had better stop away.

The following morning we received a letter from a firm of solicitors
in Lincoln's Inn with reference, so they put it, to the brutal and
unprovoked assault committed by us on the previous afternoon upon the
person of their client, Miss Matilda Hemmings. The letter stated that
we had punched Miss Hemmings in the side, struck her under the chin, and
afterward, seizing her as she was leaving the room, proceeded to commit
a gross assault, into the particulars of which it was needless for them
to enter at greater length.

It added that if we were prepared to render an ample written apology
and to pay 50 pounds compensation, they would advise their client,
Mi