Merely Mary Ann | Page 8

of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many
youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English
baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things
Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify
my historic sense--like an old building. You are picturesque. You stand
to me for all the good old ideals, including the pride which we are
beginning to see is deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious kind of
pride when one looks into it. Apparently it's based on the fact that your
family has lived on the nation for generations. And yet you won't take
my cheque, which is your own. Now don't swear--I know one mustn't
analyse things, or the world would come to pieces, so I always vote
Tory."
"Then I shall have to turn Radical," grumbled Lancelot.
"Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of
poverty," retorted Peter. "There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do it
to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are
pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear

Lancelot, you are like the king you look--you can do no wrong. You are
picturesque. Pass the whisky."
Lancelot smiled, his handsome brow serene once more. He murmured,
"Don't talk rot," but inwardly he was not displeased at Peter's allegiance,
half mocking though he knew it.
"Therefore, my dear chap," resumed Peter, sipping his whisky and
water, "to return to our lambs, I bow to your patrician prejudices in
favour of forks. But your patriotic prejudices are on a different level.
There, I am on the same ground as you, and I vow I see nothing
inherently superior in the British combination of beef and beetroot, to
the German amalgam of lamb and jam."
"Damn lamb and jam," burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical
look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on
this tack?"
"I don't know," said Peter, smiling. "We were talking about Frau
Sauer-Kraut, I think. And did you board with her all the time?"
"Yes, and I was always hungry. Till the last, I never learnt to stomach
her mixtures. But it was really too much trouble to go down the ninety
stairs to a restaurant. It was much easier to be hungry."
"And did you ever get a reform in the hours of washing the floor?"
"Ha! ha! ha! No, they always waited till I was going to bed. I suppose
they thought I liked damp. They never got over my morning tub, you
know. And that, too, sprang a leak after you left, and helped
spontaneously to wash the floor."
"Shows the fallacy of cleanliness," said Peter, "and the inferiority of
British ideals. They never bathed in their lives, yet they looked the pink
of health."
"Yes--their complexion was high--like the fish."

"Ha! ha! Yes, the fish! That was a great luxury, I remember. About
once a month."
"Of course, the town is so inland," said Lancelot.
"I see--it took such a long time coming. Ha! ha! ha! And the Herr
Professor--is he still a bachelor?"
As the Herr Professor was a septuagenarian and a misogamist, even in
Peter's time, his question tickled Lancelot. Altogether the two young
men grew quite jolly, recalling a hundred oddities, and reknitting their
friendship at the expense of the Fatherland.
"But was there ever a more madcap expedition than ours?" exclaimed
Peter. "Most boys start out to be pirates----"
"And some do become music-publishers," Lancelot finished grimly,
suddenly reminded of a grievance.
"Ha! ha! ha! Poor fellow'" laughed Peter. "Then you have found them
out already."
"Does anyone ever find them in?" flashed Lancelot. "I suppose they do
exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and
friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege,
unconscious of their invisibility to the profane eyes of mere musicians."
"My dear fellow, the mere musicians are as plentiful as niggers on the
sea-shore. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments
of unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impassable. You look
at the publisher too much from your own standpoint."
"I tell you I don't look at him from any standpoint. That's what I
complain of. He's encircled with a prickly hedge of clerks. 'You will
hear from us.' 'It shall have our best consideration.' 'We have no
knowledge of the MS. in question.' Yes, Peter, two valuable quartets
have I lost, messing about with these villains."

"I tell you what. I'll give you an introduction to Brahmson. I know
him--privately."
"No, thank you, Peter."
"Why not?"
"Because you know him."
"I couldn't give you