tell you that Dick just telephoned, and wants us to make up a party for
the theatre, with a supper afterward, next Monday. I telephoned to
Freddie and asked him, and he is delighted, and so I told Dick that we
would all come with pleasure. Now come, Billy, we must not interrupt
Tattah. This is one of the days when she must not be disturbed."

She closed the door with the softness one uses in closing the door of a
death-chamber, in order, I suppose, "not to disturb" me. I pulled
myself together, and went on.

_Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury_.

"Clean it off? What sacrilege! Why, there are persons who would like
to buy the whole wall, as Taffy tried to buy the wall on which Little
Billee had drawn Trilby's foot," I exclaimed.

Mrs. Jimmie looked incredulous. She is so deliciously lacking in a
sense of humour that in the frivolous society of Jimmie and me she is
as much out of place as the Venus de Milo would be in vaudeville.

"We had such a delightful day at Stoke Pogis Monday, how would you like
to spend Sunday at Canterbury?" she said. "It seems to me that it
would be a most restful thing to wander through that lovely old
cathedral on Sunday."

Before I could reply, Jimmie dug his hands down in his pockets, thrust
his legs out in front of him, dropped his chin on his shirt-bosom and
chuckled.

"What I like are cheerful excursions," he said. "On Monday we went to
Stoke Pogis. It rained, and we had to wear overshoes, and we carried
umbrellas. We lunched at a nasty little inn where we had to eat cold
ham and cold mutton and cold beef, when we were wet and frozen to start
with. What I wanted was a hot Scotch and a hot chop and hot
potatoes--everything _hot_. Then--"

"Wait," I cried. "It was the inn where John Storm and Glory Quayle
lunched that day when she led him such a dance."

"John Fiddlesticks!" said Jimmie. "As if that counted against that
cold lunch! Then we arranged to go in the wagonette, but you got into
such a hot argument with me--"

"I thought you said we didn't have anything hot," I murmured.

"Then we missed the wagonette, and spent an hour finding a cab. Then
when we got there we were waylaid by an old woman in a little cottage,
who showed us a register of tourists, and who artfully mentioned the
sums they had given toward the restoration of Stoke Pogis, and you made
me give more than the day's excursion cost. Then we went along a wet,
bushy lane that muddied my trouser