instant's parley he received us obsequiously, and the constable
pocketed our blessing.

"Of course," he said by way of Good night, "I knew from the first I
was dealing with gentlemen. I made no mistake about that."

The little steward admitted us to a sort of lobby or improvised
cloak-room stowed somewhere beneath the platform. While helping us
off with our coats he told us that the audience was satisfactory
"considering the weather." "A night like this isn't calculated to
fetch out doubtfuls."

"It has fetched out one, anyhow," said I. "This is Professor Foe, of
your University College."

"Greatly honoured, sir, I am sure!" The little man bowed to Foe, and
turned again to me: "Your friends, Sir Roderick, will accompany you
on the platform, of course. Shall we go in at once? Or--at this
moment Mr. Jenkinson is up. He has been speaking for twenty
minutes."

"--And has just started his peroration," said I; for though it came
muffled through the boarding, I had recognised Mr. Jenkinson's voice,
and the oration to which in other parts of London I had already
listened twice. I could time it. "There's no hurry," I said.
"Jenkinson--good man, Jenkinson--has finished with the tram-service
statistics, and will now for a brief two minutes lift the whole
question on to a higher plane. Then he'll sit down, and that's where
we'll slip in, covered by the thunder of applause."

He divided a grin between us and a couple of assistants who had been
hanging up our coats and now came forward.

"To tell you the truth, Sir Roderick, our candidate wants
strengthening a bit, for platform purposes; though they tell me he's
improving steadily. The kinder of you to come, sir, and help us.
As for Jenkinson, he's the popular pet over here, as a speaker or
when he comes across to play at the Oval. As a cricketer yourself,
Sir Roderick, you'll know what Jenkinson does with his summer?"

"Certainly," said I. "Being on the Committee of the M.C.C.--"

"You don't mean to say that it's Jenko?" Jimmy chipped in.
"You don't tell me it's our long left and left-handed Jenko, that has
bowled me at the nets a hundred times?--alas, poor Jenko!"

"Why, of course, it is," said I. "Didn't you know? . . . How the
deuce else do you suppose that a cricket pro. supports himself during
the winter?"

"I'd never thought of that," said Jimmy. "One half of the world
never knows how the other half lives."

"Well," said I, "that's Jenkinson's