[21] The club to which Mr. Perry had introduced me would have corresponded to a working man's club with us, and was under some sort of clerical control. Its members set this, along with the annual subscription, as against advantages enjoyed.

[22] Upsidonian expression for getting rid of your money.

[23] The clergy in Upsidonia were accustomed to treat the rich in a slightly different manner from that in which they treated the poor.

CHAPTER XIII

We arrived home in time to dress for dinner. Lord Arthur had laid out my evening clothes, and was still in the room, evidently ready for a little conversation.

"Well, I suppose you met some pretty low-down swabs at old Perry's club," he began "What did you do there?"

"I played bridge," I said, "and lost--I mean won--two hundred and thirty-four pounds. I have accepted a U. O. Me for it. What do you do if you haven't got the money?"

"Why, wait till you get landed with some, and swop it off. You're jolly lucky! It's a dangerous game. Why, you might have had to receive it! Who did you play with?"

"Lord Charles Delagrange was my partner. Do you know him?"

His face changed. "He's my uncle, I'm sorry to say," he said stiffly.

"But if I were to meet him in the street I should look the other way.

He's a swab of the first water."

"He seems cheerful enough," I said, "and enjoys his life thoroughly, to all appearances."

"I dare say he does. But there must be times when he asks himself whether the company he keeps is worth the price he pays for it. He can't get any other. I shouldn't think there's a servants' hall in the country that would be open to him now."

"I suppose the best society in the place is to be found in the servants'

hall."

"Of course it is--the best female society. You must come and dine with us one night here. We'll give you a very poor dinner."

"Thank you. You are very kind."

"Not at all. Of course, it's a little different in this house. We have to keep up the farce, and we don't like to put people like the Perrys out. We generally choose a night for our parties when they are dining out. In other houses you can just tell them upstairs that there won't be any regular dinner for them, when you think of having guests of your own."

At that moment Edward came into the room, and Lord Arthur left us, saying that he must go and help Mr. Blother with the table.

Edward seemed a trifle disturbed. "I say," he said, "what is all this about your being a Highlander?"

"Well, Miss Miriam and I settled it between ourselves that England must be in the Highlands somewhere," I explained.

He looked at me with some suspicion. "It's all very well to have a joke," he said, "and the story you made up to me was certainly very ingenious and amusing, though highly absurd. But I don't think you ought to want to keep it up any longer. It amused Miriam, but there's always the danger, where a young girl lives in such surroundings as these, that she may get a taste for luxury. You ought not to make it out to her that people could live anywhere in the way you pretend without disgrace. It is apt to confound right and wrong."

"My dear fellow," I said, "I quite see your point. But Miss Miriam is so level-headed that I am sure she would never be affected in that way."

"Perhaps not," he said. "Still, I think it is time you dropped it. Of course, I shouldn't dream of asking you where you really do come from, if you don't want to tell me. It is quite obvious that you are well-born and well-educated, and that is enough for me."

"My dear Edward, if you will let me call you so, I appreciate your delicacy. All I have told you is true, but I have not the slightest wish to publish it abroad if you think it would be better that I shouldn't."

"I think it is _much_ better that you shouldn't, unless you wish to lie under the suspicion of being touched in the head."

"No, I don't wish that at all. As I am already supposed to be a Highlander, suppose we keep to that."

"Well, if you like," he said unwillingly. "But if you are supposed to have come from the Highlands, you ought to be more than a little learned. I wonder you haven't already been asked what your subject is.

Is there any branch of learning in which you are an expert?"

"I took a First Cla.s.s in the Cla.s.sical Schools of my university, and am a Fellow of my College, if you know what that means."

His face brightened.[24] "Of course, you _are_ a Highlander," he said, with a smile. "I don't know why you want to make such a mystery of it; I suppose it is out of modesty. Well, I won't bother you any more; I must go and dress. My married sister, by the by, is coming to dine with her husband. He is a very good fellow, and I am sure you will get on with him. He is striving hard to overcome the defects of his birth. You remember that I told you my sister had married into the Stock Exchange."

I found the family a.s.sembled in the drawing-room. I was quite pleased to see Miriam again. I thought she looked very sweet in her white frock.

She had a lovely neck and shoulders, and her hair was very soft and fair. She smiled at me as I came in, in a friendly fashion, and seemed quite to have forgotten that a slight cloud had hung over us when we had last parted. I remembered that I had not yet pumped Edward about the mystery of the garden.

I was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein. Mr. Perry's eldest daughter must have been some years older than Miriam. She was good-looking, but wore a prim pinched-up expression. Her husband looked nervous. He was a youngish dark man, with a small moustache and hot hands. He said: "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," when we were introduced.

I took in Mrs. Perry, and had Miriam on the other side of me. Owing to the smallness of the party, Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein sat next to one another, on the other side of the table.

Curiously enough, the question I had been meaning to ask of Edward was answered for me during the conversation with which we began.

"I have a piece of news for you," said Mrs. Eppstein, to the company generally. "They say that Lady Grace Perkins has asked Sir Hugo Merton into her garden."

Everyone expressed that sort of interest with which the news of an unexpected engagement is received.

"Hugo Merton!" exclaimed Lord Arthur, who was handing round the soup.

"Why, I thought he was always hanging round little Rosie Fletcher's gate."

"She wouldn't give him the invitation he wanted," said Mr. Blother, "and I suppose he got tired of waiting for it. A gla.s.s of sherry, Edward?"

"No thank you," said Edward. "Didn't Lady Grace ask John Hardy into her garden last summer?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Eppstein; "it was he who told Herman." She turned to her husband. "The _large_ spoon, pet," she whispered, and then asked aloud: "Didn't he say that her garden was very badly kept, dear?"

Mr. Eppstein blushed awkwardly. "He said it wasn't so tyesty as some he'd been in," he said.

This reply caused some slight embarra.s.sment, which Mr. Perry sought to dissipate by saying: "John Hardy has certainly received invitations from a good many ladies. No doubt he has a way with him."

"It is quite time he asked for a key," said Mrs. Perry somewhat severely. "It is not fair on nice girls that he should go from one garden to another as he does. And it is very ill-bred to talk about them to others."

"I didn't arst 'im abaht it," said Mr. Eppstein.

"'Ask,' pet, not 'arst,'" whispered his wife.

Mr. Eppstein accepted the correction. "I didn't ask him," he said. "I fancy he was upset like at getting the chuck, and wanted to sye somethink narsty."

"Very likely that was it," said Mr. Perry, covering Mrs. Eppstein's further corrections. "Well, I am sure I hope Lady Grace and Sir Hugo will be happy together, and that it will end in his asking her for a key. He wants a wife, and a home of his own. Our friend, Sir Hugo, is employed in a large drapery establishment, Mr. Howard, where they have the system of living in. You don't know anything about that over the mountains."