flagged, for both hosts were looking forward to the effect which should presently be produced by their coup de théâtre. At last, as the final spoonfuls of baba au rhum were disappearing, the door opened by some invisible means, and in waddled Buster, the conquering hero. For some time the authority on dogs took no notice of him. At last he fixed his glass in his eye, and, after staring for a moment at the pampered favourite, he inquired doubtfully: 'Isn't there a bit of the Dach about that dog?'

'I wonder if anyone can change me a cheque for £2?' asked the gentle, humorous, lovable composer Alfred Cellier one night, as he entered the supper-room of the Cormorant Club. It's a most extraordinary thing, but the hall-porter tells me he's not allowed to cash cheques for members.' (This was a new rule, which the committee had been compelled to make, owing to the faulty financial methods of many of the light-hearted young Cormorants.) 'Dorothy,' Cellier's most successful light opera, was in the height of its success at this time. He was enjoying a spell of tremendous prosperity, and it was accordingly the poverty, and not the will of the smartly-dressed bucks assembled which prevented them from obliging the popular musician. Not one of them, as it happened, could muster more than a sovereign, when suddenly a swarthy, unkempt Irish journalist, in untidy day clothes, Barry

TO OBLIGE A FRIEND

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Lyndon, the most notorious cadger in the club, exclaimed from his corner, I think I can manage it for you, Alfred, my dear boy, if you'll come over here.' Everyone was amazed-first, that Barry should be in possession of £2; and, secondly, that he should have the effrontery to proclaim it in a club where he owed money to everyone, including the servants. But Alfred Cellier was still more astounded when he crossed to where Barry Lyndon was sitting, and saw him produce a pocket-book containing a big bunch of bank-notes. 'Look here,' said Barry: I haven't anything so small as gold. But you'd better write a cheque for more than two, hadn't you? Nothing annoys a bank so much as having to cash a lot of little footling cheques for ones and twos and threes. Wouldn't you like a note for twenty?' And he proffered a Bank of England £20 note. 'No, no! thanks very much,' said the modest Alfred. 'I really only want £2. I've got a cab outside that I've had all day I suppose he'll want then I shall want a

about a sovereign; and little supper and a cab home: 2 will be ample.' 'Well, I've nothing less than a note for ten,' said Barry, 'and I daren't trust myself with loose gold,' he added, with a leer. 'It only leads one into mischief. So write your cheque for ten, if you won't have more.' And he threw a 10 note

on to the table. Alfred wrote his cheque, which he handed with profuse thanks to the journalist, rang the bell, cashed the note, sent out I to the cabman, and settled himself down to a grill and a pint of wine. Barry sat patiently on, as the club emptied itself, and towards four o'clock he and the composer were left alone-Cellier was always a late bird. 'Alfred, my dear boy,' said the Irishman, drawing his chair round to the fire where his friend was sitting, 'I'm in the devil of a hole, and I want you to get me out of it. I'm so infernally hard up, I don't know which way to turn. I don't want to bore you with all my worries, but I haven't even the price of a cab home, or of a whisky-and-soda. But, worse than that, I've got to find by to-morrow morning-that's to say, by eleven o'clock this morning- -' 'But I thought,' interrupted Cellier'I fancied I was delighted to notice, that's to say— that you'd got a pocket cram full of money.' 'So I have but not a penny of it's mine. It's all my dear old mother's. I had to go into the City to-day to draw her dividends. She's been a great deal kinder to me already than she can afford. I daren't tell her of my troubles, for I know she'd give me the money at once, and I mustn't let her, poor old soul! I'm sure you'll appreciate my feeling in the matter. Of course, your cheque's just as good as a Bank of England note. I'll pay the lot into her

account to-morrow.

But I mustn't let her know of

my troubles. So I thought that perhaps you'd let me have £8 for a week or two, like the goodnatured chap that you are. You said you only

wanted two, you know—'

And Alfred Cellier immediately bade a permanent farewell to eight hard-earned sovereigns, like the tender-hearted lamb that he was.

CHAPTER XIII

A 'Customers' Protection Society'-Charing Cross HospitalAn operation-An unwarrantable intrusion at Westminster Hospital-A lady who changed her doctor-Firemen and their ways-How to make out a fire assurance inventory— Fires in theatres.

It was in sheer idleness and with no ulterior object that I chanced one morning to count the contents of one of the boxes of cigarettes which I used daily to buy at Messrs. Myburg and Piper's, and found that it contained only twenty-four instead of twentyfive.

But the discovery came back to my mind a long time afterwards when I received a letter from the Mutual Communication Society for the Protection of Trade, conjuring me to pay Messrs. Myburg and Piper's account. It occurred to me that just as the Chinaman who paints an ugly face on his shield to frighten his enemy must be himself timid of such bogies, so the poor tradesman whose untutored mind thinks to alarm by flourishing the name of a debt-collecting 'society' would possibly be terrified