“Why, what’s happened?”

“I am a millionaire,” said Roger calmly.  “So long as I only had my beggarly pittance, I could not ask you to marry me.  There was nothing for it but to wait in patience.  It has been a long weary wait, dear, but the sun has broken through the clouds at last.  I am now in a position to support a wife.  Tuesday at two,” he went on, consulting his pocket diary; “or I could give you half an hour on Monday morning.”

“But why this extraordinary hurry?  Why mayn’t I be married properly, with presents and things?”

“My dear,” said Roger reproachfully, “you forget.  I am a City man now, and it is imperative that I should be married at once.  Only a married man, with everything in his wife’s name, can face with confidence the give and take of the bustling City.”

A FEW FRIENDS

MARGERY

I.—­A TWICE TOLD TALE

“Is that you, uncle?” said a voice from the nursery, as I hung my coat up in the hall.  “I’ve only got my skin on, but you can come up.”

However, she was sitting up in bed with her nightgown on when I found her.

“I was having my bath when you came,” she explained.  “Have you come all the way from London?”

“All the way.”

“Then will you tell me a story?”

“I can’t; I’m going to have my dinner.  I only came up to say Good-night.”

Margery leant forward and whispered coaxingly, “Will you just tell me about Beauty and ’e Beast?”

“But I’ve told you that such heaps of times.  And it’s much too long for to-night.”

“Tell me half of it.  As much as that.”  She held her hands about nine inches apart.

“That’s too much.”

“As much as that.”  The hands came a little nearer together.

“Oh!  Well, I’ll tell you up to where the Beast died.”

“Fought he died,” she corrected eagerly.

“Yes.  Well—­”

“How much will that be?  As much as I said?”

I nodded.  The preliminary business settled, she gave a little sigh of happiness, put her arms round her knees, and waited breathlessly for the story she had heard twenty times before.

“Once upon a time there was a man who had three daughters.  And one day—­”

“What was the man’s name?”

“Margery,” I said reproachfully, annoyed at the interruption, “you know I never tell you the man’s name.”

“Tell me now.”

“Oswald,” I said, after a moment’s thought.

“I told Daddy it was Thomas,” said Margery casually.

“Well, as a matter of fact, he had two names, Oswald and Thomas.”

“Why did he have two names?”

“In case he lost one.  Well, one day this man, who was very poor, heard that a lot of money was waiting for him in a ship which had come over the sea to a town some miles off.  So he—­”