Good heavens! had he made a mistake? Was it not
Bobtail's but another man's hand that was clutching his wrist? Thank
Heaven, it was Bobtail's!

There never was an occasion, before or after, I feel absolutely sure,
when du Maurier was more truly glad to see me. His colour rapidly
returned, and he swore that of all the bonnes blagues this was the
best; but for all that, one thing is certain--he has never since
attempted to pick pockets in Regent Street.

A delightful compromise between Bohemia and the land where
well-regulated Society rules supreme, was the ground on which stood
Moray Lodge, the residence of Arthur Lewis, the head of the well-known
firm of Lewis and Allenby.

We have read of him before:--

"Sir Lewis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on
Campden Hill, a house of many windows, and, whichever window
he looks out of, he sees his own garden and very little else.
There was no pleasanter or more festive house than his in
London, winter or summer."

I quote this, as probably it may not be known to everybody that Sir
Lewis was knighted on the memorable occasion of Trilby's birthday,
when she was presented at the drawing--and every other--room. With
much kindly fore-thought his friend and biographer allows him to be
eighty years old in the early sixties, thereby enabling him to have
attained to-day the ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen.

Well, he was one of du Maurier's earliest friends, and when Taffy
the Laird, and Little Billie, "a-smokin' their pipes and cigyars,"
told the cabby to drive to Mechelen Lodge, I found my way to what I
called Moray Lodge, and met them there. And there too, to be sure,
was Glorioli, "the tall, good-looking swarthy foreigner from whose
scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded lips issued the most ravishing
sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or boy."

As we now empty one or the other of the million bottles that are
about, marked "De Soria, Bordeaux," we often think with gratitude of
the great wine-grower and still greater singer, so correctly described
as "singing best for love or glory in the studios of his friends."

To return to Arthur Lewis:--

He occupied an exceptional position, inasmuch as he had made his house
a centre towards which intellectual London gravitated. When he had
done this, that, and the other to make his bachelor days memorable to
a host of friends, he wound up by marrying one of England's