ost awful lies about what
everybody has said to me, and what I've said to everybody, and how my
gowns were admired. What do you think of this one?"

For answer I took the privilege of a friend.

"I'm glad you think well of me," she said. "Billy has such a high
opinion of you. You will hear some funny tales. I'm glad you know."

I had to leave London again, and Billy died before I returned. I heard
that she had to be fetched from a ball, and was only just in time to
touch his lips before they were cold. But her friends excused her by
saying that the end had come very suddenly.

I called on her a little later, and before I left I hinted to her what
people were saying, and asked her if I had not better tell them the
truth.

"I would rather you didn't," she answered. "It seems like making public
the secret side of one's life."

"But," I urged, "they will think--"

She interrupted me.

"Does it matter very much what they think?"

Which struck me as a very remarkable sentiment, coming from the Hon. Mrs.
Drayton, _nee_ the elder Miss Lovell.

THE CHOICE OF CYRIL HARJOHN

Between a junior resident master of twenty-one, and a backward lad of
fifteen, there yawns an impassable gulf. Between a struggling journalist
of one-and-thirty, and an M.D. of twenty-five, with a brilliant record
behind him, and a career of exceptional promise before him, a close
friendship is however permissible.

My introduction to Cyril Harjohn was through the Rev. Charles Fauerberg.

"Our young friend," said the Rev. Mr. Fauerberg, standing in the most
approved tutorial attitude, with his hand upon his pupil's shoulder, "our
young friend has been somewhat neglected, but I see in him possibilities
warranting hope--warranting, I may say, very great hope. For the present
he will be under my especial care, and you will not therefore concern
yourself with his studies. He will sleep with Milling and the others in
dormitory number two."

The lad formed a liking for me, and I think, and hope, I rendered his
sojourn at "Alpha House" less irksome than otherwise it might have been.
The Reverend Charles' method with the backward was on all fours with that
adopted for the bringing on of geese; he cooped them up and crammed them.
The process is profitable to the trainer, but painful to the goose.

Young Harjohn and myself left "Alpha House" at the end of the same term;
he bound for Brasenose, I for Bloomsbury. He made a point of nev