nk iced water at or immediately after breakfast during
the first week he spends in America. I do not take to the stuff till
I have been there about a fortnight. But Gorman, in spite of his
patriotism, has a good deal of the cosmopolitan about him. Strange foods
and drinks upset him very little.

"Doing anything this evening?" he asked. "If not will you spend it with
me? Ascher has promised to come. We're going to a circus and on for
supper afterwards. You remember the circus I mentioned to you on the
steamer."

I hesitated before I answered. I suppose I looked a little astonished.
That Gorman should propose an evening out was natural enough. I should
not call him a dissipated man, but he has a great deal of vitality and
he likes what he calls "a racket" occasionally. What surprised me was
that a circus should be his idea of dissipation. A circus is the sort of
entertainment to which I send my nephew--a boy of eleven--when he
spends the night with me in London on his way to school. My servant,
a thoroughly trustworthy man, takes him there. I pay for the tickets.
Gorman, Ascher, and I were three grown men and we could not boast of a
child among us to serve as an excuse for going to a circus.

"It's quite a good show," said Gorman.

I tried to think of Ascher at a circus. I failed to picture him, a man
educated up to the highest forms of art, gazing in delight while a lady
in short petticoats jumps through a hoop from the back of a galloping
horse. I had not been at a circus for about thirty years, since my tenth
birthday indeed, but I do not believe that the form of entertainment
has changed much since then. The clowns' jokes--I judge from my nephew's
reports--are certainly the same as they were in my time. But even very
great improvements would not make circuses tolerable to really artistic
people like Ascher.

"I've got free passes for the best seats," said Gorman.

He had mistaken the cause of my hesitation. I was not thinking of the
cost of our evening's amusement.

"You journalists," I said, "are wonderful. You get into the front row
every time without paying, whether it's a coronation or a funeral. How
did you manage it this time?"

"My brother Tim is connected with the show. I daresay you don't remember
him at Curraghbeg. He was fifteen years younger than me. My father
married a second time, you know. Tim is my half-brother."

I did not remember Gorman himself in Curraghbeg. I could not be expected
to re