Merely Mary Ann | Page 6

then let the
family perish with honour."
"But the daughters of oil-strikers are sometimes very charming
creatures. They are polished with their fathers' oil."
"You are right. They reek of it. Pah! I pray to Heaven Lionel will either
wed a lady or die a bachelor."
"Yes; but what do you call a lady?" persisted Peter.
Lancelot uttered an impatient snarl, and rang the bell violently. Peter
stared in silence. Mary Ann appeared.
"How often am I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?"
snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had
time to play parlour games with you."
Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches,
and left the room without a word.
"I, say, Lancelot, adversity doesn't seem to have agreed with you," said
Peter severely. "That poor girl's eyes were quite wet when she went out.
Why didn't you speak? I could have given you heaps of lights, and you
might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript."
"Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said
Lancelot somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called
Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had
another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I
went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly
way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is, she's been
called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's
name--if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she
answers to the name of Mary Ann in every sense of the phrase."
"She didn't seem at all bad-looking, any way," said Peter.

"Every man to his taste!" growled Lancelot. "She's as platt and
uninteresting as a wooden sabot."
"There's many a pretty foot in a sabot," retorted Peter, with an air of
philosophy.
"You think that's clever, but it's simply silly. How does that fact affect
this particular sabot?"
"I've put my foot in it," groaned Peter comically.
"Besides, she might be a houri from heaven," said Lancelot; "but a
houri in a patched print-frock----" He shuddered, and struck a match.
"I don't know exactly what houris from heaven are, but I have a kind of
feeling any sort of frock would be out of harmony----!"
Lancelot lit his pipe.
"If you begin to say that sort of thing, we must smoke," he said,
laughing between the puffs. "I can offer you lots of tobacco--I'm sorry
I've got no cigars. Wait till you see Mrs. Leadbatter--my landlady--then
you'll talk about houris. Poverty may not be a crime, but it seems to
make people awful bores. Wonder if it'll have that effect on me? Ach
Himmel! how that woman bores me. No, there's no denying it--there's
my pouch, old man--I hate the poor; their virtues are only a shade more
vulgar than their vices. This Leadbatter creature is honest after her
lights--she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings--and I only hate
her the more for it."
"I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same
mistaken sense of duty," said Peter acutely. "Thanks; think I'll try one
of my cigars. I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out. Yes, here it is;
won't you try one?"
"No, thanks, I prefer my pipe."
"It's the same old meerschaum, I see," said Peter.

"The same old meerschaum," repeated Lancelot, with a little sigh.
Peter lit a cigar, and they sat and puffed in silence.
"Dear me!" said Peter suddenly; "I can almost fancy we're back in our
German garret, up the ninety stairs, can't you?"
"No," said Lancelot sadly, looking round as if in search of something;
"I miss the dreams."
"And I," said Peter, striving to speak cheerfully, "I see a dog too
much."
"Yes," said Lancelot, with a melancholy laugh. "When you funked
becoming a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you."
"What? you called him Peter?"
"No, Beethoven!"
"Beethoven! Really?"
"Really. Here, Beethoven!"
The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully
towards Lancelot's face.
Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice. He didn't know whether
he was pleased, or touched, or angry.
"You started to tell me about those twenty thousand shillings," he said.
"Didn't I tell you? On the expectations of my triumph, I lived
extravagantly, like a fool, joined a club, and took up my quarters there.
When I began to realise the struggle that lay before me, I took
chambers; then I took rooms; now I'm in lodgings. The more I realised
it, the less rent I