"You won't mind our hanging round a little while, in case you're thrown out again?" asked the Babe.
"Not in the least, so far as I am concerned," replied Jack Herring.
"Don't leave it too late and make your mother anxious."
"It's true enough," the Babe recounted afterwards. "The door was opened by a manservant and he went straight in. We walked up and down for half an hour, and unless they put him out the back way, he's telling the truth."
"Did you hear him give his name?" asked Somerville, who was stroking his moustache.
"No, we were too far off," explained the Babe. "But--I'll swear it was Jack--there couldn't be any mistake about that."
"Perhaps not," agreed Somerville the Briefless.
Somerville the Briefless called at the offices of Good Humour, in Crane Court, the following morning, and he also borrowed Miss Ramsbotham's Debrett.
"What's the meaning of it?" demanded the sub-editor.
"Meaning of what?"
"This sudden interest of all you fellows in the British Peerage."
"All of us?"
"Well, Herring was here last week, poring over that book for half an hour, with the Morning Post spread out before him. Now you're doing the same thing."
"Ah! Jack Herring, was he? I thought as much. Don't talk about it, Tommy. I'll tell you later on."
On the following Monday, the Briefless one announced to the Club that he had received an invitation to dine at the Loveredges' on the following Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Briefless one entered the Club with a slow and stately step. Halting opposite old Goslin the porter, who had emerged from his box with the idea of discussing the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, Somerville, removing his hat with a sweep of the arm, held it out in silence. Old Goslin, much astonished, took it mechanically, whereupon the Briefless one, shaking himself free from his Inverness cape, flung it lightly after the hat, and strolled on, not noticing that old Goslin, unaccustomed to coats lightly and elegantly thrown at him, dropping the hat, had caught it on his head, and had been, in the language of the prompt-book, "left struggling." The Briefless one, entering the smoking-room, lifted a chair and let it fall again with a crash, and sitting down upon it, crossed his legs and rang the bell.
"Ye're doing it verra weel," remarked approvingly the Wee Laddie.
"Ye're just fitted for it by nature."
"Fitted for what?" demanded the Briefless one, waking up apparently from a dream.
"For an Adelphi guest at eighteenpence the night," assured him the Wee Laddie. "Ye're just splendid at it."
The Briefless one, muttering that the worst of mixing with journalists was that if you did not watch yourself, you fell into their ways, drank his whisky in silence. Later, the Babe swore on a copy of Sell's Advertising Guide that, crossing the Park, he had seen the Briefless one leaning over the railings of Rotten Row, clad in a pair of new kid gloves, swinging a silver-headed cane.
One morning towards the end of the week, Joseph Loveredge, looking twenty years younger than when Peter had last seen him, dropped in at the editorial office of Good Humour and demanded of Peter Hope how he felt and what he thought of the present price of Emma Mines.
Peter Hope's fear was that the gambling fever was spreading to all classes of society.
"I want you to dine with us on Sunday," said Joseph Loveredge.
"Jack Herring will be there. You might bring Tommy with you."
Peter Hope gulped down his astonishment and said he should be delighted; he thought that Tommy also was disengaged. "Mrs.
Loveredge out of town, I presume?" questioned Peter Hope.
"On the contrary," replied Joseph Loveredge, "I want you to meet her."
Joseph Loveredge removed a pile of books from one chair and placed them carefully upon another, after which he went and stood before the fire.
"Don't if you don't like," said Joseph Loveredge; "but if you don't mind, you might call yourself, just for the evening--say, the Duke of Warrington."
"Say the what?" demanded Peter Hope.
"The Duke of Warrington," repeated Joey. "We are rather short of dukes. Tommy can be the Lady Adelaide, your daughter."
"Don't be an ass!" said Peter Hope.
"I'm not an ass," assured him Joseph Loveredge. "He is wintering in Egypt. You have run back for a week to attend to business.
There is no Lady Adelaide, so that's quite ******."
"But what in the name of--" began Peter Hope.
"Don't you see what I'm driving at?" persisted Joey. "It was Jack's idea at the beginning. I was frightened myself at first, but it is working to perfection. She sees you, and sees that you are a gentleman. When the truth comes out--as, of course, it must later on--the laugh will be against her."
"You think--you think that'll comfort her?" suggested Peter Hope.
"It's the only way, and it is really wonderfully ******. We never mention the aristocracy now--it would be like talking shop. We just enjoy ourselves. You, by the way, I met in connection with the movement for rational dress. You are a bit of a crank, fond of frequenting Bohemian circles."
"I am risking something, I know," continued Joey; "but it's worth it. I couldn't have existed much longer. We go slowly, and are very careful. Jack is Lord Mount-Primrose, who has taken up with anti-vaccination and who never goes out into Society. Somerville is Sir Francis Baldwin, the great authority on centipedes. The Wee Laddie is coming next week as Lord Garrick, who married that dancing-girl, Prissy Something, and started a furniture shop in Bond Street. I had some difficulty at first. She wanted to send out paragraphs, but I explained that was only done by vulgar persons--that when the nobility came to you as friends, it was considered bad taste. She is a dear girl, as I have always told you, with only one fault. A woman easier to deceive one could not wish for. I don't myself see why the truth ever need come out--provided we keep our heads."
"Seems to me you've lost them already," commented Peter; "you're overdoing it."
"The more of us the better," explained Joey; "we help each other.