s was born....
Taxi!'

A cab rolled smoothly to the kerb, and the driver received his
instructions with a majestic nod.

'Another reason I have for suggesting Sheppard's,' continued Trent,
feverishly lighting a cigarette, 'is that I am going to be married to
the most wonderful woman in the world. I trust the connection of ideas
is clear.'

'You are going to marry Mabel!' cried Mr Cupples. 'My dear friend, what
good news this is! Shake hands, Trent; this is glorious! I congratulate
you both from the bottom of my heart. And may I say--I don't want to
interrupt your flow of high spirits, which is very natural indeed, and I
remember being just the same in similar circumstances long ago--but
may I say how earnestly I have hoped for this? Mabel has seen so much
unhappiness, yet she is surely a woman formed in the great purpose of
humanity to be the best influence in the life of a good man. But I did
not know her mind as regarded yourself. Your mind I have known for some
time,' Mr Cupples went on, with a twinkle in his eye that would have
done credit to the worldliest of creatures. 'I saw it at once when
you were both dining at my house, and you sat listening to Professor
Peppmuller and looking at her. Some of us older fellows have our wits
about us still, my dear boy.'

'Mabel says she knew it before that,' replied Trent, with a slightly
crestfallen air. 'And I thought I was acting the part of a person
who was not mad about her to the life. Well, I never was any good at
dissembling. I shouldn't wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed something
through his double convex lenses. But however crazy I may have been as
an undeclared suitor,' he went on with a return to vivacity, 'I am going
to be much worse now. As for your congratulations, thank you a thousand
times, because I know you mean them. You are the sort of uncomfortable
brute who would pull a face three feet long if you thought we were
making a mistake. By the way, I can't help being an ass tonight; I'm
obliged to go on blithering. You must try to bear it. Perhaps it would
be easier if I sang you a song--one of your old favourites. What was
that song you used always to be singing? Like this, wasn't it?' He
accompanied the following stave with a dexterous clog-step on the floor
of the cab:

'There was an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg. He had no tobacco, no
tobacco could he beg. Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox, And he
always had tobacco in his old tob