--worry it, worry it! Good dog! Worry it!" (The dog growled now
over a torn document beneath the table.) "Miss Taft, you might see
that a _communique _ goes out to the effect that I gave my first
sitting to Mr. Saracen Givington, A.R.A., this morning. The activities
of Mr. Saracen Givington are of interest to the world, and rightly
so! You'd better come round to the other side for the right foot, Mr.
Bootmaker. The journey is simply nothing."

And then, and not till then, did Sir John Pilgrim turn his large and
handsome middle-aged blond face in the direction of Alderman Edward
Henry Machin.

"Pardon my curiosity," said Sir John, "but who are you?"

"My name is Machin--Alderman Machin," said Edward Henry. "I sent up my
card and you asked me to come in."

"Ha!" Sir John exclaimed, seizing an egg. "Will you crack an egg with
me, Alderman? I can crack an egg with anybody."

"Thanks," said Edward Henry. "I'll be very glad to." And he advanced
towards the table.

Sir John hesitated. The fact was that, though he dissembled his dismay
with marked histrionic skill, he was unquestionably overwhelmed by
astonishment. In the course of years he had airily invited hundreds
of callers to crack an egg with him--the joke was one of his
favourites--but nobody had ever ventured to accept the invitation.

"Chung," he said weakly, "lay a cover for the Alderman."

Edward Henry sat down quite close to Sir John. He could discern all
the details of Sir John's face and costume. The tremendous celebrity
was wearing a lounge-suit somewhat like his own, but instead of the
coat he had a blue dressing-jacket with crimson facings; the sleeves
ended in rather long wristbands, which were unfastened, the opal
cuff-links drooping each from a single hole. Perhaps for the first
time in his life Edward Henry intimately understood what idiosyncratic
elegance was. He could almost feel the emanating personality of Sir
John Pilgrim, and he was intimidated by it; he was intimidated by
its hardness, its harshness, its terrific egotism, its utterly brazen
quality. Sir John's glance was the most purely arrogant that Edward
Henry had ever encountered. It knew no reticence. And Edward Henry
thought: "When this chap dies he'll want to die in public, with the
reporters round his bed and a private secretary taking down messages."

"This is rather a lark," said Sir John, recovering.

"It is," said Edward Henry, who now felicitously perceived that a lark
it in