"

"But--but," Samuel began stammering again. "Why didn't you come straight
to me--instead of here?"

George put on a confidential look.

"The fact is," said he, "Mary wouldn't. She's vexed. You know how women
are. They never understand things--especially money."

"Vexed with me?"

"Yes."

"But why?" Again Samuel felt like a culprit.

"I fancy it must be something you said in your letter concerning
champagne."

"It was only what I read about you in a paper."

"I suppose so. But she thinks you meant it to insult her. She thinks you
must have known perfectly well that we simply asked the reporter to put
champagne in because it looks well--seems very flourishing, you know."

"I must see Mary," said Samuel. "Of course the idea of you staying on
here is perfectly ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous. What do you suppose
people will say?"

"I'd like you-to-see her," said George. "I wish you would. You may be
able to do what I can't. You'll find her in Room 14. She's all dressed.
But I warn you she's in a fine state."

"You'd better come too," said Samuel.

George lifted Georgie out of the perambulator.

"Here," said George. "Suppose you carry him to her."

Samuel hesitated, and yielded. And the strange procession started
upstairs.

In two hours a cab was taking all the Peels to Hillport.

In two days George and his family were returning to London, sure of the
continuance of five hundred a year, and with a gift of two hundred
supplementary cash.

But it was long before Bursley ceased to talk of George Peel and his
family putting up at the Tiger. And it was still longer before the
barmaid ceased to describe to her favourite customers the incredible
spectacle of Samuel Peel, J.P., stumbling up the stairs of the Tiger
with an infant in his arms.

THE REVOLVER

When friends observed his occasional limp, Alderman Keats would say,
with an air of false casualness, "Oh, a touch of the gout."

And after a year or two, the limp having increased in frequency and
become almost lameness, he would say, "My gout!"

He also acquired the use of the word "twinge." A scowl of torture would
pass across his face, and then he would murmur, "Twinge."

He was proud of having the gout, "the rich man's disease." Alderman
Keats had begun life in Hanbridge as a grocer's assistant, a very simple
person indeed. At forty-eight he was wealthy, and an alderman. It is
something to be alderman of a town of sixty thousand inhab