, and that he was going to give Geraldine two hundred a
year for dress. He feared apoplexy in his mother, and a nervous crisis
in Aunt Annie.

The marriage took place in a church. It was not this that secretly
pained Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie; all good Wesleyan Methodists marry
themselves in church. What secretly pained them was the fact that Henry
would not divulge, even to his own mother, the locality of the
honeymoon. He did say that Geraldine had been bent upon Paris, and that
he had completely barred Paris ('Quite right,' Aunt Annie remarked), but
he would say no more. And so after the ceremony the self-conscious pair
had disappeared for a fortnight into the unknown and the unknowable.

And now they had reappeared out of the unknown and the unknowable, and,
with the help of four servants, meant to sustain life in Mrs. Knight and
Aunt Annie for a period of some five hours.

They heard a ring in the distance of the flat.

'Prepare to receive cavalry,' said Geraldine, sitting erect in her blue
dress on the green settee in the middle of the immense drawing-room.

Then, seeing Henry's face, she jumped up, crossed over to her husband,
and gave him a smacking kiss between the eyes. 'Dearest, I didn't mean
it!' she whispered enchantingly. He smiled. She flew back to her seat
just as the door opened.

'Mr. Doxey,' said a new parlourmaid, intensely white and black, and
intensely aware of the eminence of her young employers. And little
Doxey of the P.A. came in, rather shabby and insinuating as usual, and
obviously impressed by the magnificence of his surroundings.

'My good Doxey,' exclaimed the chatelaine. 'How delicious of you to have
found us out so soon!'

'How d'you do, Doxey?' said Henry, rising.

'Awfully good of you to see me!' began Doxey, depositing his
well-preserved hat on a chair. 'Hope I don't interrupt.' He smiled.
'Can't stop a minute. Got a most infernal bazaar on at the Cecil. Look
here, old man,' he addressed Henry: 'I've been reading your _Love in
Babylon_ again, and I fancied I could make a little curtain-raiser out
of it--out of the picture incident, you know. I mentioned the idea to
Pilgrim, of the Prince's Theatre, and he's fearfully stuck on it.'

'You mean, you think he is,' Geraldine put in.

'Well, he is,' Doxey pursued, after a brief pause. 'I'm sure he is. I've
sketched out a bit of a scenario. Now, if you'd give permission and go
shares, I'd do it, old chap.'

'A play, eh?' was a