had originally anticipated. The boy was distinctly presentable; he knew
how to brush his hair, which was possibly an imitative faculty; he knew
what colour of tie suited him, which might be intuition; he was exactly
the type that Jocantha admired, which of course was accident. Altogether
she was rather pleased when the girl looked at the clock and bade a
friendly but hurried farewell to her companion. Bertie nodded
"good-bye," gulped down a mouthful of tea, and then produced from his
overcoat pocket a paper-covered book, bearing the title "Sepoy and Sahib,
a tale of the great Mutiny."

The laws of tea-shop etiquette forbid that you should offer theatre
tickets to a stranger without having first caught the stranger's eye. It
is even better if you can ask to have a sugar basin passed to you, having
previously concealed the fact that you have a large and well-filled sugar
basin on your own table; this is not difficult to manage, as the printed
menu is generally nearly as large as the table, and can be made to stand
on end. Jocantha set to work hopefully; she had a long and rather high-
pitched discussion with the waitress concerning alleged defects in an
altogether blameless muffin, she made loud and plaintive inquiries about
the tube service to some impossibly remote suburb, she talked with
brilliant insincerity to the tea-shop kitten, and as a last resort she
upset a milk-jug and swore at it daintily. Altogether she attracted a
good deal of attention, but never for a moment did she attract the
attention of the boy with the beautifully-brushed hair, who was some
thousands of miles away in the baking plains of Hindostan, amid deserted
bungalows, seething bazaars, and riotous barrack squares, listening to
the throbbing of tom-toms and the distant rattle of musketry.

Jocantha went back to her house in Chelsea, which struck her for the
first time as looking dull and over-furnished. She had a resentful
conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at dinner, and that the
play would be stupid after dinner. On the whole her frame of mind showed
a marked divergence from the purring complacency of Attab, who was again
curled up in his corner of the divan with a great peace radiating from
every curve of his body.

But then he had killed his sparrow.

ON APPROVAL

Of all the genuine Bohemians who strayed from time to time into the would-
be Bohemian circle of the Restaurant Nuremberg, Owl Street, Soho, none
wa