“But—­but,” Samuel began stammering again.  “Why didn’t you come straight to me—­instead of here?”

George put on a confidential look.

“The fact is,” said he, “Mary wouldn’t.  She’s vexed.  You know how women are.  They never understand things—­especially money.”

“Vexed with me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?” Again Samuel felt like a culprit.

“I fancy it must be something you said in your letter concerning champagne.”

“It was only what I read about you in a paper.”

“I suppose so.  But she thinks you meant it to insult her.  She thinks you must have known perfectly well that we simply asked the reporter to put champagne in because it looks well—­seems very flourishing, you know.”

“I must see Mary,” said Samuel.  “Of course the idea of you staying on here is perfectly ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous.  What do you suppose people will say?”

“I’d like you-to-see her,” said George.  “I wish you would.  You may be able to do what I can’t.  You’ll find her in Room 14.  She’s all dressed.  But I warn you she’s in a fine state.”

“You’d better come too,” said Samuel.

George lifted Georgie out of the perambulator.

“Here,” said George.  “Suppose you carry him to her.”

Samuel hesitated, and yielded.  And the strange procession started upstairs.

In two hours a cab was taking all the Peels to Hillport.

In two days George and his family were returning to London, sure of the continuance of five hundred a year, and with a gift of two hundred supplementary cash.

But it was long before Bursley ceased to talk of George Peel and his family putting up at the Tiger.  And it was still longer before the barmaid ceased to describe to her favourite customers the incredible spectacle of Samuel Peel, J.P., stumbling up the stairs of the Tiger with an infant in his arms.

THE REVOLVER

When friends observed his occasional limp, Alderman Keats would say, with an air of false casualness, “Oh, a touch of the gout.”

And after a year or two, the limp having increased in frequency and become almost lameness, he would say, “My gout!”

He also acquired the use of the word “twinge.”  A scowl of torture would pass across his face, and then he would murmur, “Twinge.”

He was proud of having the gout, “the rich man’s disease.”  Alderman Keats had begun life in Hanbridge as a grocer’s assistant, a very simple person indeed.  At forty-eight he was wealthy, and an alderman.  It is something to be alderman of a town of sixty thousand inhabitants.  It was at the age of forty-five that he had first consulted his doctor as to certain capricious pains, which the doctor had diagnosed as gout.  The diagnosis had enchanted him, though he tried to hide his pleasure, pretending to be angry and depressed.  It seemed