essary politeness.

"Well, it's not me, its old Thrapston; and if you say it's wrong, I'll
believe yon. Old Thrapston--hang it, Victor, that old man ought to be
hanged! Why, only the other day I saw him----"

"Do stick to the point," groaned Victor.

"All right. Well, he said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a'--and he
winked his sinful old eye, you know, for all the world like a
what-d'ye-call-it in a cathedral one of those hideous--I say, what is
the word, Victor? I saw 'em when Agatha took me--beg pardon, Merceron?"

Was the world full of Agathas? If so, it would be well not to start
whenever one was mentioned. Charlie recovered himself.

"I think you must mean a gargoyle," he said, wondering who this Agatha
might be.

"Of course I do. Fancy forgetting that! Gargoyle, of course. Well, old
Thrapston said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a woman in that dashed
summer house, Calder, my boy.'"

Victor Button's eyes lighted with a gleam,

"Well, I'm hanged if I ever thought of that! Charlie, you held us all!"

"Bosh!" said Charlie Merceron. "There was no one there."

"All right. But there ought to have been, you know--to give interest to
the position."

"Honor bright, Charlie?" asked Victor Sutton.

"Shut up, Sutton," interposed Calder, "He's not in the Divorce Court,
Let's change the subject."

Charlie was in a difficulty, but the better course seemed to be to
allow the subject to be changed, in spite of the wink that accompanied
Calder's suggestion.

"All right," said Victor. "How is Miss Glyn, Wentworth?"

"Oh, she's all right. She's been in the country for a bit, but she's
back now."

"And when is the happy event to be?"

Calder laid down his knife and fork and remarked deliberately:

"I haven't, my dear boy, the least idea."

"I should hurry her up," laughed Sutton.

"I'd just like--now I should just like to put you in my shoes for half
an hour, and see you hurry up Agatha."

"She couldn't eat me."

"Eat you? No, but she'd flatten you out so that you'd go under that
door and leave room for the jolly draught there is all the same."

Sutton laughed complacently.

"Well, you're a patient man," he observed. "For my part, I like a thing
to be off or on."

It came to Charlie Merceron almost as a surprise to find that Victor's
impudence--he could call it by no other name--was not reserved for his
juniors or for young men from the country; but Calder took it quite
good-humoredly, contenting himself