istinction. They
were a very decent sort....

After many hours we stopped playing whist, and broke up for chewing and
chatting. The bored-looking man of middle age picked me up, and we took
two stray girls in tow for wine and sandwiches. The manners at the
supper-crush were elegance itself. The girls smoked cigarettes just a
little too defiantly, but they were quite well-bred about it. A lot of
well-bred witticisms floated around, with cool laughter and pretty
smiles. A knot of girls with two boys talked somewhat decryingly of Shaw
and Strindberg; and one caught stray straws of talk about Masefield,
Beecham opera, Scriabine, Marinetti, Augustus John. Two girls were
giving a concert at the Steinway next week. Others were aiming at the
Academy. Another had had a story accepted by the _English Review_. They
were a very decent sort.

The bored man plucked at my arm and suggested that we get rid of the
girls, and go across to "The Railway" and have one. We did. In the
lounge of "The Railway" he told me the one about the lady and taxi. It
was very good, but extremely ill-bred. He was a prominent local doctor,
so I told him the one about the medical man on the panel, and about the
Bishop who put gin in his whisky. Then he told me another ... and
another. He remembered the old days at the London.... He said he had had
to go to this show because his boy and girl were there. Cards bored him
to death, but he liked to be matey with the youngsters. Suppose we had
just one more?

We had just one more. From across the way came, very sweet and faint,
the sound of laughter and young voices. Some one had started a piano,
and the Ballade in A Minor was wandering over Surbiton. I looked into my
brandy-glass, and, as I am very young, I rather wanted to cry. I don't
know why. It was just the mood ... the soft night, Surbiton, young boys
and girls, Chopin, Martell.... I said I had to catch an immediate train
to Waterloo, and I drank up and bolted.

* * * * *

The other Saturday morning I met a friend at the Bedford Street Bodega.
He said, "Laddie, doing anything to-night?" I said, "No; what's on?"

He said: "Like to help your old uncle?"

I said: "Stand on me."

"Well, it's a little charity show. A Social at Battersea Town Hall. Some
local club or tennis-party or some jolly old thing of that sort. All
receipts to the local hospital. All the gang are going to do
something--kind of informal, you know. I'