nevolent prig, bestowing society
upon her as a man doles out indigestible stuff to a kid, using a sort of
guilty discrimination in the distribution--"

"What on earth is all this?" demanded Lansing; "are you perhaps _non
compos_, dear friend?"

"I'm trying to tell you and explain to myself that little Miss Erroll is
a rare and profoundly interesting specimen of a genus not usually too
amusing," he replied with growing enthusiasm. "Of course, Holly Erroll
was her father, and that accounts for something; and her mother seems to
have been a wit as well as a beauty--which helps you to understand; but
the brilliancy of the result--aged nineteen, mind you--is out of all
proportion; cause and effect do not balance. . . . Why, Boots, an
ordinary man--I mean an everyday fellow who dines and dances and does
the harmlessly usual about town, dwindles to anaemic insignificance when
compared to that young girl--even now when she's practically
undeveloped--when her intelligence is like an uncut gem still in the
matrix of inexperience--"

"Help!" said Boots feebly, attempting to bolt; but Selwyn hooked arms
with him, laughing excitedly. In fact Lansing had not seen his friend in
such excellent spirits for many, many months; and it made him
exceedingly light-hearted, so that he presently began to chant the old
service canticle:

"I have another, he's just as bad,
He almost drives me crazy--"

And arm in arm they swung into the dark avenue, singing "Barney Riley"
in resonant undertones, while overhead the chilly little Western stars
looked down through pallid convolutions of moving clouds, and the wind
in the gas-lit avenue grew keener on the street-corners.

"Cooler followed by clearing," observed Boots in disgust. "Ugh; it's the
limit, this nipping, howling hemisphere." And he turned up his overcoat
collar.

"I prefer it to a hemisphere that smells like a cheap joss-stick," said
Selwyn.

"After all, they're about alike," retorted Boots--"even to the ladrones
of Broad Street and the dattos of Wall. . . . And here's our bally
bungalow now," he added, fumbling for his keys and whistling "taps"
under his breath.

As the two men entered and started to ascend the stairs, a door on the
parlour floor opened and their landlady appeared, enveloped in a soiled
crimson kimona and a false front which had slipped sideways.

"There's the Sultana," whispered Lansing, "and she's making
sign-language at you. Wig-wag her, Phil. Oh