Thus spake Mrs Ellis across the tea-table in an alcove at the Hanover.

“But you’ve not finished the story!” I explained.

“Yes, I have,” she said.

“You haven’t explained what you were doing at my tailor’s in Sackville Street.”

“Oh!” she cried, “I was forgetting that.  Well, I promised Ellis a new suit.  And as I wanted to show him that after all I had larger ideas about tailoring than he had, I told him I knew a very good tailor’s in Sackville Street—­a real West End tailor—­and that if he liked he could have his presentation suit made there.  He pooh-poohed the offer at first, and pretended that his Bursley tailor was just as good as any of your West End tailors.  But at last he accepted.  You see—­it meant an authorized visit to London....  I’d been into the tailor’s just now to pay the bill.  That’s all.”

“But even now,” I said, “you haven’t finished the story.”

“Yes, I have,” she replied again.

“What about Nellie Smith?” I demanded.  “A story about a handsome girl named Nellie, who could make a break of twenty-eight at billiards, and a handsome dog like Ellis Carter, and a fire, and the girl wearing the youth’s jacket—­it can’t break off like that.”

“Look here,” she said, leaning a little across the table.  “Did you expect them to fall in love with each other on the spot and be engaged?  What a sentimental old thing you are, after all!”

“But haven’t they seen each other since?”

“Oh yes!  In London, and in Bursley too.”

“And haven’t they—­”

“Not yet....  They may or they mayn’t.  You must remember this isn’t the reign of Queen Victoria....  If they do, I’ll let you know.”

THE TIGER AND THE BABY

I

George Peel and Mary, his wife, sat down to breakfast.  Their only son, Georgie, was already seated.  George the younger showed an astounding disregard for the decencies of life, and a frankly gluttonous absorption in food which amounted to cynicism.  Evidently he cared for nothing but the satisfaction of bodily desires.  Yet he was twenty-two months old, and occupied a commanding situation in a high chair!  His father and mother were aged thirty-two and twenty-eight respectively.  They both had pale, intellectual faces; they were dressed with elegance, and their gestures were the gestures of people accustomed to be waited upon and to consider luxuries as necessaries.  There was silver upon the table, and the room, though small and somewhat disordered, had in it beautiful things which had cost money.  Through a doorway half-screened by a portiere could be seen a large studio peopled with heroic statuary, plaster casts, and lumps of clay veiled in wet cloths.  And on the other side of the great window of the studio green trees waved their foliage.  The trees were in Regent’s Park.  Another detail to show that the Peels had not precisely failed in life:  the time was then ten-thirty o’clock!  Millions of persons in London had already been at hard work for hours.