gave the
public clearly to understand that owing to its coldness and neglect a
number of ladies and gentlemen of very superior talents were subsisting
in their midst mainly upon brinjals and soda water. "I'm in hospital,"
Mr. Stanhope would say to the reporters, "and I'm d---- glad of it."--he
always insisted on the oath going in, it appealed so sympathetically to
the domiciled Englishman grown cold to superiority--"for, upon my soul,
I don't know where I'd turn for a crust if I weren't." In the end the
talented ladies and gentlemen usually went home by an inexpensive line
as the voluntary arrangement of a public to whom plain soda was a
ludicrous hardship, and native vegetables an abomination at any price.
Then Llewellyn and Rosa Norton--she had a small inalienable income, and
they were really married, though they preferred for some inexplicable
reason to be thought guilty of more improper behaviour--would depart in
another direction full of gratification for the present and of
confidence for the future. Llewellyn usually made a parting statement to
the newspapers that, although his aims were unalterably high, he was not
above profiting by experience, and that next season he could be relied
upon to hit the taste of the community with precision. This year, as we
know, he had made a serious effort by insisting that at least a
proportion of his ladies and gentlemen should be high kickers, and equal
to an imitation, good enough for the Orient, of most things done by the
illustrious Mr. Chevalier. But the fact that Mr. Stanhope had selected
_The Offence of Galilee_ to open with tells its own tale. He was
convinced, but not converted, and he stood there with his little legs
apart, chewing a straw above the three uncut emeralds that formed the
chaste decoration of his shirt-front, giving the public of Calcutta one
more chance to redeem itself.

It began to look as if Calcutta were not wholly irredeemable. A
ticca-gharry deposited a sea captain; three carriages arrived in
succession; an indefinite number of the Duke's Own, hardly any of them
drunk, filed in to the rupee seats under the gallery; an overflow from
Jimmy Finnigan, who could no longer give his patrons even standing room.
When this occurred, Llewellyn turned and swung indifferently away in the
direction of the dressing-rooms. When Jimmy Finnigan closed his doors so
early there was no further cause for anxiety. Calcutta was abroad and
stirring, and would turn for am