is enough to say that, thus equipped, and with the additional merits of wealth and a good position, ALGERNON ought to have found no difficulty in being one of the most popular men in town.  Perhaps he would have been if he had not tried with such a persistent energy to make himself “so deuced agreeable.”  The phrase is not mine, but that of SAMMY MIGGS, who has a contempt for ALGERNON and his methods, which he never attempts to conceal.

“ALGY, my boy,” I have heard him say, while the unfortunate JESSAMY smiled uneasily, and shifted on his seat, “ALGY, my boy, I’ve known you too long to give in to any of your nonsense.  All that butter of yours is wasted here, so you’d better keep it for someone who likes it.  Try it on QUISBY,” he continued, indicating the celebrated actor, who was at that moment frowning furiously over a notice of his latest performance; “he loves it in firkins, and I’ll undertake to say you’ll never get to the bottom of his swallowing capacity.  You’ll have to exhaust even your stock, ALGY, my boy; and that’s saying a lot.”

So thoroughly uncomfortable did the suave and gentle ALGERNON look, that I afterwards ventured to remonstrate mildly with the gadfly MIGGS.

“What?” he said, “made him uncomfortable, did I?  And a jolly good job too.  Bless you, I know the beggar through and through.  I wasn’t at Oxford with him for nothing.  Wish I had been.  He’s the sort of chap who loses no end of I.O.U.’s at cards one night, and when he wins piles of ready the next never offers to redeem them.  You let me alone about ALGY.  I tell you I know him.  There’s no bigger humbug in Christendom with all his soft sawder and gas about everybody being the dearest and cleverest fellow he’s ever met.  Bah!”

And therewith SAMMY left me, evidently smarting under some ancient sore inflicted by the apparently angelic ALGERNON.

However, this little incident was not the one I intended to narrate.  I met ALGY, as I said, about a month ago.  It was in Piccadilly.  At first, as I approached, I thought he did not see me, but suddenly he seemed to become aware of my presence.  An electric thrill of joy ran through him, a smile of heavenly welcome irradiated his face, he darted towards me with both hands stretched out and almost fell round my neck before all the astonished cabmen.

“My dear, dear fellow,” he gasped, apparently struggling hard with an overpowering emotion, “this is almost too much.  To think that I should meet the one man of all others whom I have been literally longing to see.  Now you simply must walk with me for a bit.  I can’t afford to let you go without having a good talk with you.  It always refreshes me so to hear your opinions of men and things.”