ave been doing things from the cradle upwards. I wish
I could do things!"

"Well, why don't you?"

Archie flicked the ash from his cigarette into the finger-bowl.

"Oh, I don't know, you know," he said, "Somehow, none of our family ever
have. I don't know why it is, but whenever a Moffam starts out to do
things he infallibly makes a bloomer. There was a Moffam in the Middle
Ages who had a sudden spasm of energy and set out to make a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, dressed as a wandering friar. Rum ideas they had in those
days."

"Did he get there?"

"Absolutely not! Just as he was leaving the front door his favourite
hound mistook him for a tramp--or a varlet, or a scurvy knave, or
whatever they used to call them at that time--and bit him in the fleshy
part of the leg."

"Well, at least he started."

"Enough to make a chappie start, what?"

Roscoe Sherriff sipped his coffee thoughtfully. He was an apostle of
Energy, and it seemed to him that he could make a convert of Archie and
incidentally do himself a bit of good. For several days he had been,
looking for someone like Archie to help him in a small matter which he
had in mind.

"If you're really keen on doing things," he said, "there's something you
can do for me right away."

Archie beamed. Action was what his soul demanded.

"Anything, dear boy, anything! State your case!"

"Would you have any objection to putting up a snake for me?"

"Putting up a snake?"

"Just for a day or two."

"But how do you mean, old soul? Put him up where?"

"Wherever you live. Where do you live? The Cosmopolis, isn't it? Of
course! You married old Brewster's daughter. I remember reading about
it."

"But, I say, laddie, I don't want to spoil your day and disappoint you
and so forth, but my jolly old father-in-law would never let me keep a
snake. Why, it's as much as I can do to make him let me stop on in the
place."

"He wouldn't know."

"There's not much that goes on in the hotel that he doesn't know," said
Archie, doubtfully.

"He mustn't know. The whole point of the thing is that it must be a dead
secret."

Archie flicked some more ash into the finger-bowl.

"I don't seem absolutely to have grasped the affair in all its aspects,
if you know what I mean," he said. "I mean to say--in the first
place--why would it brighten your young existence if I entertained this
snake of yours?"

"It's not mine. It belongs to Mme. Brudowska. You've heard of her, of
course?"