"Nobody arst you to make it your affair. If you like to stick on here,
well and good. I'm quitting. I'll see Bank Holiday through, and then I'm
O-R-P-H. See?"

"Leavin' me?"

"Leavin' you. If you must be left."

Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly had become distasteful. Once
upon a time it had been bright with hope and new beginnings and stock
and the prospect of credit. Now--now it was failure and dust. Very
likely the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row about
the window.... "Where d'you think of going, Bert?" Grubb asked.

Bert turned round and regarded him. "I thought it out as I was walking
'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a wink."

"What did you think out?"

"Plans."

"What plans?"

"Oh! You're for stickin, here."

"Not if anything better was to offer."

"It's only an ideer," said Bert.

"You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song you sang."

"Seems a long time ago now," said Grubb.

"And old Edna nearly cried--over that bit of mine."

"She got a fly in her eye," said Grubb; "I saw it. But what's this got
to do with your plan?"

"No end," said Bert.

"'Ow?"

"Don't you see?"

"Not singing in the streets?"

"Streets! No fear! But 'ow about the Tour of the Waterin' Places of
England, Grubb? Singing! Young men of family doing it for a lark? You
ain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's all right. I never see a
chap singing on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked
hat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's my
ideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we
was doing for foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easy
make up a programme--easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encores
and patter. I'm all right for the patter anyhow."

Grubb remained regarding his darkened and disheartening shop; he thought
of his former landlord and his present landlord, and of the general
disgustingness of business in an age which re-echoes to The Bitter Cry
of the Middle Class; and then it seemed to him that afar off he heard
the twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the voice of a stranded siren
singing. He had a sense of hot sunshine upon sand, of the children of at
least transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle round about him, of
the whisper, "They are really gentlemen," and then dollop, dollop came
the coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; no
outgoings, no bills. "