nice fellows, aren't they?'

'Oh, yes, they're very decent. I must bring some of them round, one of
these days.'

He remembered with a pang that it would be necessary to provide whisky.
One couldn't ask the guest to drink table beer at tenpence the gallon.

'Who are they, though?' said Mary. 'I think they might have given you a
wedding present.'

'Well, I don't know. We never have gone in for that sort of thing. But
they're very decent chaps. Well, there's Harvey; "Sauce" they call him
behind his back. He's mad on bicycling. He went in last year for the
Two Miles Amateur Record. He'd have made it, too, if he could have got
into better training.

'Then there's James, a sporting man. You wouldn't care for him. I always
think he smells of the stable.'

'How horrid!' said Mrs. Darnell, finding her husband a little frank,
lowering her eyes as she spoke.

'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. A
terrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much to
believe. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buying
cockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come,
believed every word of it.'

Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest.

'And that wasn't a bad yarn about Salter's wife,' he went on. 'Salter is
the manager, you know. Dickenson lives close by, in Notting Hill, and he
said one morning that he had seen Mrs. Salter, in the Portobello Road,
in red stockings, dancing to a piano organ.'

'He's a little coarse, isn't he?' said Mrs. Darnell. 'I don't see much
fun in that.'

'Well, you know, amongst men it's different. You might like Wallis; he's
a tremendous photographer. He often shows us photos he's taken of his
children--one, a little girl of three, in her bath. I asked him how he
thought she'd like it when she was twenty-three.'

Mrs. Darnell looked down and made no answer.

There was silence for some minutes while Darnell smoked his pipe. 'I
say, Mary,' he said at length, 'what do you say to our taking a paying
guest?'

'A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?'

'Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate your
objection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and make
money of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to our
income. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a large
house on purpose. They have a regular lawn for tennis and a
b