h the
allied forces of love and jealousy can bring upon the just. Fanny Fitz
has since admitted that, in spite of the wrath that burned within her,
the sight of Mr. Gunning morosely dabbing his long nose with the
repulsive sponge that was shared by the troupe, almost moved her to
compassion.

A pleasing impatience was already betraying itself in cat-calls and
stampings from the sixpenny places, and Mrs. Carteret, flitting like a
sheep dog round her flock, arranged them in couples and drove them
before her on to the stage, singing in chorus, with a fair assumption of
hilarity, "As we go marching through Georgia".

For Fanny Fitz the subsequent proceedings became merged in a nightmare
of blinding heat and glare, made actual only by poignant anxiety as to
the length of her green skirt. The hope that she might be unrecognisable
was shattered by the yell of "More power, Miss Fanny!" that crested the
thunderous encore evoked by her hornpipe with Captain Carteret, and the
question of the skirt was decided by the fact that her aunts, in the
front row, firmly perused their programmes from the beginning of her
dance to its conclusion.

The entertainment went with varying success after the manner of its
kind. The local hits and personal allusions, toilfully compiled and
ardently believed in, were received in damping silence, while Rupert
Gunning's song, of the truculent order dedicated to basses, and sung by
him with a face that would have done credit to Othello, received an
ovation that confirmed Captain Carteret in his contempt for country
audiences. The performance raged to its close in a "Cake Walk," to the
inspiring strains of "Razors a-flying through the air," and the curtain
fell on what the Enniscar _Independent_ described cryptically as "a
_tout ensemble a la conversazione_ that was refreshingly unique".

"Five minutes more and I should have had heat apoplexy!" said Mrs.
Carteret, hurling her turban across the clerk's room, "but it all went
splendidly! Empty that basin out of the window, somebody, and give me
the vaseline. The last time I blacked my face it was covered with red
spots for a week afterwards because I used soap instead of vaseline!"

Rupert Gunning approached Fanny with an open note in his hand.

"I've had this from your aunt," he said, handing it to her; it was
decorated with sooty thumb marks, to which Fanny's black claw
contributed a fresh batch as she took it, but she read it without a
smile.

I