six-weeks-old baby! But no. One could not. As Miss Annie Brett smiled
at me pointedly, and rubbed her ringed hands, and kept on smiling with
her terrific mechanical effusiveness, I lost all my self control; I
would have resigned myself to a hundred horrible tomorrows under the
omnipotent, inexplicable influence of the private bar. I ejaculated, as
though to the manner born--

'Irish.'

It proved to have been rather clever of me, showing as it did a due
regard for convention combined with a pretty idiosyncrasy. Mr Brindley
was clearly taken aback. The idea struck him as a new one. He
reflected, and then enthusiastically exclaimed--

'Dashed if I don't have Irish too!'

And Miss Brett, delighted by this unexpected note of Irish in the long,
long symphony of Scotch, charged our glasses with gusto. I sipped,
death in my heart, and rakishness in my face and gesture. Mr Brindley
raised his glass respectfully to Miss Annie Brett, and I did the same.
Those two were evidently good friends.

She led the conversation with hard, accustomed ease. When I say 'hard'
I do not in the least mean unsympathetic. But her sympathetic quality
was toughened by excessive usage, like the hand of a charwoman. She
spoke of the vagaries of the Town Hall clock, the health of Mr
Brindley's children, the price of coal, the incidence of the annual
wakes, the bankruptcy of the draper next door, and her own sciatica,
all in the same tone of metallic tender solicitude. Mr Brindley adopted
an entirely serious attitude towards her. If I had met him there and
nowhere else I should have taken him for a dignified mediocrity, little
better than a fool, but with just enough discretion not to give himself
away. I said nothing. I was shy. I always am shy in a bar. Out of her
cold, cold roving eye Miss Brett watched me, trying to add me up and
not succeeding. She must have perceived, however, that I was not like a
fish in water.

There was a pause in the talk, due, I think, to Miss Annie Brett's
preoccupation with what was going on between Miss Slaney, the ordinary
barmaid, and her commercial traveller. The commercial traveller, if he
was one, was reading something from a newspaper to Miss Slaney in an
indistinct murmur, and with laughter in his voice.

'By the way,' said Mr Brindley, 'you used to know Simon Fuge, didn't
you?'

'Old Simon Fuge!' said Miss Brett. 'Yes; after the brewery company took
the Blue Bell at Cauldon over from him, I used to be the