Chapter VII: The Bun Emperor and Empress at Home

As the rabbit, in moments of danger, has a passion for the little hole into which it darts with the speed of lightning, so, in moments both of safety and danger, has the properly-constituted Englishman a passion for "the home." Even the most middle-class owner of a tiny semi-detached "villa residence," looking out over a network of railway, is prepared to defend it and its clothes-line, and that mysterious barrel which always stands on end at its back-door, with his heart's best blood. Now, this is very creditable. But even a very beautiful and noble instinct may be carried too far. And the Englishman's passion for the home was, in the Bun Emperor's case, carried very far indeed.

Mr. Lite was a remarkable man in many subtle ways. Of course he had risen from the gutter. Everybody does do that nowadays. There is nothing original in the feat. His gutter was an exceedingly small, and exceedingly dingy, pie-shop in Camberwell, the sort of miscellaneous pie-shop which exhibits to the street a terrace on which things of meat and things of jam, the saveloy and the marmalade puff, air themselves side by side in a fly-blown amity of meek endurance. And it was this fact which had eventually obtained for worthy Mrs. Lite, who had assisted in the shop, the sobriquet of "the raised pie," a title suitable to her changed social condition.

In the old days, Mr. Perry Lite had been devoured by a passion for the Camberwell home. He had worshipped the terrace on which the pies lethargically leaned. He had adored the stuffy back-parlour, divided from the shop by a half-glass door, on which a cracked bell tinkled. The man who had dared to invade the privacy of that parlour would have found himself face to face with a fury, inflexibly set on ejection. The small bedroom above-stairs was, at that time, Mr. Lite's idea of heaven, and he considered the attic in which the servant—had there been one, which there was not—would have slept a fit receptacle for a goddess. In fact, Mr. Lite's heart sent out tendrils, which climbed, like creepers, all over the Camberwell pie-house. But in due time he had to cut the creepers down.

Either Mrs. Lite was unusually clever at making pies, buns, sweetmeats, and cakes, or Mr. Lite had extraordinary business capacity, or Fortune was determined that there should be a Bun Emperor in Britain, and that Mr. Lite looked the part better than anybody else. In any case, money came, and with it changes. The Camberwell residence was exchanged for Bayswater; Bayswater was given up, in its turn, for Oxford Street. Then followed Piccadilly, with branch establishments all over the place. And, finally, Mr. and Mrs. Lite found themselves settled in the palace near Ascot which was known far and wide to a wondering world as Ribton Marches. And it was in Ribton Marches that Mr. Lite allowed the old passion to develop into a disease. At Camberwell he had been very fond of the home. At Sunninghill he adored it with his whole heart and body, preferring it to Windsor Castle, and strong in a belief that her Most Gracious Majesty, who occasionally passed near his gates while on her afternoon carriage expeditions, sickened with envy when her royal eyes beheld the cupolas which made the roof-tree of the palace bulbous in every imaginable direction. Ribton Marches had been built according to Mr. Lite's own ideas, which took the form of a huge erection combining many of the peculiar merits of the Leicester Square Alhambra and the Crystal Palace. Wherever you expected to find stone you came upon glass; wherever you anticipated glass you came upon stone. If you looked for a flat roof, your eye met a cupola; if you glanced up in search of a cupola, you probably missed it and saw a flat roof. The palace continually "had" you. It was full of winter gardens, and in all these winter gardens there were talking parrots. The palace was crammed with echoes, and as you explored it, under the careful and most suspicious supervision of Mr. Lite, its mighty walls seemed to breathe out to you from every side such mysterious expressions as "Hallelujah! Bow-wow-wow!" "Polly, go to bed!" and "Polly very drunk; naughty Polly!" the latter statement being usually succeeded by a loud noise as of the drawing of dozens of champagne corks. There were several libraries in the palace, and several boudoirs; but the boudoirs were on the ground-floor, and the libraries were upstairs. In the picture-gallery the Dutch-oven school was well represented, and in the purple drawing-room there was a new species of orchestrion, to the hullabaloo of which Mr. and Mrs. Lite were wont to fall gently asleep each evening after dinner. A remarkable feature of the palace was the large number of machines, constructed on the penny-in-the-slot principle, which stood about in the different apartments, prepared to yield to the influence of the enquiring copper an assortment of cigars, stamps, cigarettes, surprise packets, chocolate drops, Dutch dolls, perfume squirts, luggage-labels, and other like necessaries. Of these Mr. Lite was very proud: their mechanism, which no fellow was ever able to understand, was devised by him, and was different in important respects from that of the graceful erections which have been so artistically placed in many of the more beautiful parts of England. Whenever any guests came to lunch with him—he seldom had anyone to stay the night—he would always invite them to set his machines in motion, and the disappearing pennies went to assist in the founding of the Lite Home for Elderly Bun-makers who had got past their work.

In the centre of the palace was a large hall, baronial here and there, containing a staircase which had been conveyed at a vast cost from somewhere abroad, an oak ceiling, an organ, and other necessary furniture. At the first glance this hall looked rather more suitable for the accommodation of Handel Festivals than for a simple home life. But the Bun Emperor and Empress, looking—as to size—like a couple of peas in the vast immensity of unutterable space, often took afternoon tea there in sweet domestic solitude, or sat there by the hour listening to the distant voices of the parrots resounding from the adjacent winter gardens. Other inhabitants of the palace were certain pugs—Dinah, Sam, Gog and Magog—retained by Mrs. Lite to give an air of aristocracy to the establishment; various footmen, powdered and unpowdered; and a very large and scorbutic individual, by name Mr. Harrison, who enjoyed the title of "groom of the chambers," and the advantage of doing nothing whatsoever from morning till night.

On a certain evening in June the Bun Emperor and Empress rose at about eight o'clock from their late dinner in the cedar-wood dining-parlour, decorated with the heads of stags shot by nobody knows who, engravings of popular pictures, and china from different portions of the habitable globe, and proceeded to the purple drawing-room to listen to the cooling orchestrion, whose tremendous strains so soothed their souls and stimulated their digestive processes. They went arm-in-arm, preceded by a footman, and followed by the pugs in waddling procession. The Bun Emperor was short, with exceedingly rounded contours, features resembling those of the first Napoleon, fierce dark eyes, and the gait of a man who has won a great many battles. His Empress was also short and rounded, with grey hair elaborated into many little curls about her forehead, neat features of the nut-cracker type, and, as a general rule, a slightly fatuous expression of eager self-complacency. To-night, however, her face was decorated with the flames of temper, and she gained the purple drawing-room on rather tremulous feet.

Arrived there, she sharply withdrew her hand from the Emperor's fat arm, sat down in a brocaded chair, and turned upon the respectful flunkey who had shown the way.

"Frederick," she said, "turn on the orchestrion."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And set it at 'They Never do That to Me.'"

She darted a glance at the Emperor as she said the last words.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Frederick.

The pugs sat down. Frederick obeyed orders, and in a moment the big room was crammed with the beautiful and classical strains of the song already alluded to, given out by the expensive instrument with an unflinching power and a stentorian sweetness that must surely have compelled the most unmusical person to do homage, if not to melody, at least to strength. Frederick made his exit, and the Bun Emperor collapsed in silence by his wife's side. He looked less violent than usual, and, indeed, the expression upon his face might almost have been called an expression of apprehension. The song ran on. The pugs declined from a sitting into a sidelong posture, and with four simultaneous sighs gave way to the charms of snoring with open eyes. The Emperor's two thumbs began rapidly to revolve one over the other.

"Don't do that, Perry," said the Empress; "it spoils the music."

The Emperor desisted, apparently very much to his wife's vexation, for she pursed her lips, screwed her brow, and arranged her curls with a trembling hand. "For they nev-arr do that _to_ me!" shouted the orchestrion for the dozenth time.

"D'you hear that, Perry?" said the Empress viciously.

The Emperor jerked an affirmative with his head.

"And d'you feel it?" pursued the Empress. "D'you feel it as you ought?"

"My dear!" said the Emperor. "My dear!"

"Oh, I daresay," said the Empress, flaunting her head passionately sideways. "I daresay. But what's the good of that? What's the good of affection, and 'my dear' this, and 'my dear' that, when it's done and can't be undone?"

"I can't go back upon my word, Henrietta."

"Then why give it? That's what I say. Why give it?" cried the Empress. "And all for a paltry bit of bun-praise that won't sell half a million of buns when all's said and done!"

And she kicked Magog sharply in his third rib. The dog sent forth a cry of anguish, but the Empress was in no way concerned; on the contrary, the utterance seemed to nerve her for fresh exertions.

"No, nor a quarter of a million," she continued. "Let it be in every paper in Christendom."

"I think you underrate Lady Sophia's influence, Henrietta," said the Emperor meekly; "I do indeed. She will have great weight in infant circles, I feel sure—very great weight, my dear. That 'they should be nourishing' will go home to the mothers, too. Oh, there can be no doubt at all about it, no doubt in the world."

"That's what you think?"

"It is, my darling, it is indeed!"

"Well, and if she does sell half a million, or a million either, it ain't worth it. No, Perry, it ain't!"

At this juncture the Empress was visibly affected. Her "ain't" was really tragic, not merely on account of the stress with which it was given out, but still more on account of its employment by the lady; for both the Emperor and Empress were in calm moments very particular in speech. They not merely refrained from dropping their h's and from putting them in wrongly, they went further than that. They dealt very tenderly and impressively with aspirates, sounding them in a marked and highly deliberate manner when they occurred, and even leaving them out when they did not occur, in a way that could scarcely escape the attention of the keen grammarian or finished orator. The Emperor was greatly moved by his wife's avoidance of the customary "is not." But he was a tenacious man, and still held to his point.

"If I had not secured Lady Sophia's bun-praise when I had the opportunity, my dear," he said, "it would have haunted me to the last day of my life. It would have been going against the principles of a lifetime; them as have—those which have made us what we are, Henrietta. Go for the names—that has been my motto in the trade. Go for the names."

"Yes; go for the names, and go out of the home!" cried the Empress. "Oh, Perry, Perry!"

The orchestrion drowned her wail, but the Emperor felt it, divined it, nevertheless. He was sincerely moved.

"Don't, my dear, don't!" he ejaculated.

"I will! I must!" said the Empress. "To leave the old home at our time of life! To be turned out into the streets! Oh! oh!"

This statement of the Empress contained at least two fallacies, which might almost be called thumping lies. For Ribton Marches was only about five years old, and the fishing-cottage to which Mr. Rodney had persuaded the worthy couple presently to retire was backed by a pine wood and fronted by a charming little pond, generally called "the lake." However, the Emperor did not contradict his spouse. He only patted her gently on her heaving back, while his own features became contorted with agitation at the prospect conjured up by her pictorial remarks.

"And these Londoners," continued the Empress, very nearly qualifying them with the contemptuous epithet "'ere,"—"these Londoners! Oh, what may they not do to the home! What may they not do! I can't bear it! No, I can't!"

The Emperor's face assumed an expression such as may well have been observed upon Napoleon's immediately before the battle of Waterloo.

"Do to the home!" he said, striking one fat hand down upon his knee. "Let them try it on! Mr. Harrison has his orders."

The Empress looked up.

"What d'you mean, Perry?" she asked.

"What I say, Henrietta. Mr. Harrison has his orders."

Had the Emperor been speaking of certain secret commands laid by him upon a professional assassin his voice could not have been more fiercely sinister. The blood of the Empress almost ran cold.

"No, they never do that to me!" bellowed the orchestrion.

"What orders, Perry? Orders to do what?"

"Ah!" said the Emperor, wagging his massive head passionately from one side to the other, while his eyes stared as if in contemplation of some terrible picture. "Let them try it on! Let them only try it, and they will repent it, Henrietta, to the last day of their natural lives!"

"Perry!" said the Empress impressively, "what are you going for to do?"

"My duty to you and to the home."

"What! then the Londoners ain't coming?"

"Are not, my dear," said the Emperor in courtly correction. "Yes, come they must, for I've given my word to the fiddle-faced feller. But, as I say, Mr. Harrison has his orders to keep his eye on them, day in, day out, morning, noon and night."

"Night, Perry!" ejaculated the Empress. "What—the ladies?"

"Only till they retire, Henrietta, of course. If they damage the bedrooms they shall answer for it, though!"

The Emperor delivered the last sentence with the sudden rapidity and power of a thunder-clap. The Empress, who was now beginning to take a back seat, looked admiringly at her lord.

"Ah, Perry, what a man you are!" she murmured.

"They shall find out what sort of a man I am, if they try on any of their tricks here," said the Emperor. "If so much as a bit of wood's chipped off, or so much as a parrot's missing, they'll regret it—to their lives' end, they will!"

But now, with the inconsistency of woman, the Empress returned to her former complaining.

"Yes, I daresay," she said, in a whining voice; "but having it out of them in the end won't make up to us for all we have to go through. Think of it, Perry! You and me not able to be in the home, not able to sit at tea in the hall, not able to hear that"—she waved her plump hand sorrowfully at the orchestrion—"of an evening! Oh, Perry, think of the silence—think of the silence!"

And here the Empress wept as women weep at the silence of the grave. The Emperor looked at the orchestrion.

"We might take it with us, perhaps," he said musingly. "It would be a comfort to us, Henrietta, that can't be denied."

"It's too big for the cottage," wept the Empress. "No, it must be left for the Londoners to hear; they'll listen to 'em, Perry—to all our tunes. They'll hear 'em sitting where we sit now—'What's the Odds as Long as we're Young?' and 'I Didn't Go for to Cheese my Pal,' and 'My Old Dutch,' and all the rest of 'em! And we shall be sitting, you and me, and nothing but silence for us to hear!"

The poor lady became epic. She beat her hands in her emblazoned lap, and her features seemed to disappear behind her expression as the features in an agonised face sometimes do.

"It's only for six days," faltered the Emperor, almost overwhelmed by the realisation of what was before them.

"It'll seem six years—it'll seem a lifetime! And the size of the cottage, too! Why, it was only made to hold a fisherman!"

This argument was so unanswerable that the Emperor could only say:

"My dear, the house in Camberwell was small."

"And so was we when we lived there," retorted the Empress. "But we're a bit bigger now, I hope."

Who could stand up against such merciless logic? Not the Emperor, certainly. He began to feel as if they would have to spend their week in the fishing-cottage crouching upon all-fours, in attitudes formed to attract the cramp. And meanwhile that pernicious race, "the Londoners," as the Empress always called them in the voice of one alluding to the Hairy Ainu, or any other peculiarly savage tribe—the Londoners would be couching in the partially baronial hall, wandering through the vistas of boudoirs, reading in the libraries, listening to the light conversation of the parrots in the winter gardens, dining among the stags' heads in the cedar-wood parlour, possibly even dancing, or dicing, or following some other cannibal custom in the purple drawing-room. All these ideas, thronging upon him in a grisly crowd, so weighed upon the Emperor's spirit that he let his head drop on his breast, and allowed to escape from him this awful sentence of self-condemnation:

"I do believe I've been a fool!"

"You never spoke a truer word, Perry," rejoined the pitiless Empress. "And if I'd been at the Crystal Palace that night things would have been different. All I say is, don't let that Mr. Rodney come near me, or I may forget as I'm a lady, and let him feel on his face what I think of him."

"He over-persuaded me. He said, Lady Sophia's word would bring in every mother in the kingdom."

"May it prove so," said the Empress, with biting sarcasm—"may it prove so, Perry! Do they bring their own linen?" she added sharply, "or do they sleep between our very sheets?"

"I'm afraid, my love, that we have to provide everything, excepting food. They pay extra for that—and drink."

The Empress lay back in a suffering position, as one who thinks of a strange and unknown tribe sleeping between her private sheets, and resting their dreadful heads upon her gently-nurtured pillow-slips. This announcement of the Emperor's seemed to be the last straw. She struggled no more; she resorted no longer to the weapons of argumentative brilliancy, cunning sarcasm, fiery logic, or tender pathos. She simply lay back and endured the devastating blows of Fate, as prepared for her by the husband to whom she naturally looked for tenderness and protection. And the Emperor, gazing furtively upon his consort, was wrung to the very heart. And all the time the orchestrion, as if in a mood of diabolic raillery, thundered out persistently "They Never do That to Me!" The noise of the refrain got upon the Emperor's nerves. It seemed to chide him for a base deed. For had he not done the wrong thing by the Empress in striking his fearful bargain among the glittering steel knives with Mr. Rodney? Surely, surely, yes. But we do not like to have our faults brought home to us by a machine. The Emperor suddenly stamped his foot furiously upon the floor. This motion rang an electric bell let into the carpet beside his armchair. The powdered Frederick instantly appeared.

"Stop it!" cried the Emperor in a fearful voice—"stop it!"

"Sir?"

"Stop that tune!"

Frederick induced the instrument to be quiet.

"And now," said the Emperor, throwing a compassionate and ashamed glance upon his wife—"now set it at—let's see"—he paused, in deep thought—"at the 'Dear Old Home.'"

Frederick obeying, the purple drawing-room was quickly pervaded by a strain so soft and heartrending that it might have melted an actor-manager to modesty, or persuaded a tigress to be tame. It had its effect even upon the Empress. She started, glanced around her with agitation as the melody smote—or rather glided—upon the porches of her ears, composed herself to inflexibility, started again, regarded the orchestrion with an air of distracted enquiry, turned to the Emperor, and finally, with a wild and poignant cry of "Oh, Perry, Perry, that it should come to this!" fell upon his breast, and bedewed his frilled shirt-front with wifely tears.

There are scenes that must not be described, circumstances that must not be depicted, situations that must not be intruded upon. One of the chief of these is surely an Emperor and Empress in hysterics. Let the veil close. Let privacy immerse the prostrated couple.

Yet we must meet them again in circumstances perhaps even more tragic. We must follow them through ways foggy with misfortune.

The Sunday immediately preceding the Monday of Ascot week was a black-letter day indeed for Mr. and Mrs. Lite. No potentates on the eve of being thrust out from their kingdom ever suffered under a sense of greater indignity than did they as they saw their boxes being packed by valet and maid for departure, and wandered through the palace taking a last farewell of the many objects that they loved so dearly. Mrs. Lite was become entirely lachrymose under the weight of unmerited misfortune, but her husband could in almost all circumstances rely with certainty upon the support of his naturally violent temper, and on this, as on many other less terrible occasions, it buoyed him up, and prevented him from sinking into a condition of unmanly despondency. Instead of being simply sad, he was also furious, and although depression unutterable attacked his bleeding heart as the hour drew near when he must leave the home, the passionate antagonism which he increasingly felt against "the Londoners" kept him from breaking down, and even assisted his habitual vitality till it burnt with the fierceness of a flame fed by petroleum. Especially hot was his wrath against poor innocent Mr. Rodney, the unsuspicious cause of all this trouble. And one circumstance which increased the Bun Emperor's anger against the gentle owner of Mitching Dean was that Lady Sophia Tree's bun-praise, although it had been duly advertised in almost every paper in the kingdom, had not as yet occasioned any very unusual rush of infants upon the provender by the sale of which the Emperor and Empress lived. The sale had kept up, had even slightly increased, but that was all that could be said. Therefore the Emperor's troubled waters were not mingled with a sufficient quantity of oil to quiet them. And on this fateful Sunday his passion mounted to a climax. The veins of his ample forehead were already swelled at breakfast—in Winter Garden number one. His cheeks were flushed at lunch-time, and as the afternoon drew on he seemed perpetually on the verge of an ebullition of ungovernable fury. His large, gipsy-like eyes stared about him at all the familiar objects which he had collected in the home, objects hitherto only beheld by the very few persons—aristocratic bun-praisers and others—whom the Emperor honoured with his personal friendship. He held in one fat hand, and frequently referred to, a list, forwarded according to agreement by Mr. Rodney, of the members of the vile tribe who on the morrow were to take possession of his beautiful palace. The list was as follows:

Mrs. Verulam. The Duchess of Southborough. The Lady Pearl McAndrew. Hon. Miss Bindler. Lady Drake. Mr. Van Adam. Mr. Hyacinth Rodney. The Duke of Southborough. Mr. Ingerstall. Mr. James Bush.

Over and over again did the Emperor con this list, and endeavour to conjure up an idea of what manner of women and men these unknown strangers might be. Over and over again did he read the names aloud to the Empress with a hard and guttural intonation. The only members of the tribe personally known to him were the Duke and Duchess of Southborough and Mr. Rodney. The latter he now loathed with all his soul. The two former he respected as thoroughly useful and efficient bun-praisers. What of the others? What of Mrs. Verulam, the Lady Pearl, Miss Bindler? What of Mr. Van Adam, Mr. Ingerstall, and Mr. James Bush? Names are sometimes suggestive, and call up pictures before the eyes of the imaginative. The Bun Emperor became imaginative under the combined influences of sorrow and temper, and, summoning the Empress to him in the hall built for the accommodation of Handel Festivals, he proceeded to go through a performance that was somewhat like a public school "call-over," without any answers from the boys.

"Sit down, Henrietta," he said in a loud and quivering voice.

The Empress sat on a chair just under the great organ, and in the shadow of the enormous staircase. The Emperor remained standing, as if at a desk.

"Mrs. Verulam!" he cried, and looked from his list to the Empress, consulting furiously her intuitions.

The Empress shook her curly head.

"You don't like it, Henrietta?" said the Emperor anxiously.

"It's a silly-sounding name," said the Empress.

"It is, my dear. She's the one that pays the rent."

The Empress pursed her lips, and two tears trickled slowly over her rounded cheeks.

"That don't make her name any less silly-sounding," she gulped. "Oh, to think——"

"Mr. Van Adam!" cried the Emperor hastily, consulting the list again.

This time he did not ask the Empress for her opinion, but gave his own.

"I call that a low name," he said. "Bible names I never could abide since I was done by Ezekiel. You remember how I was done by Ezekiel over the pork pies?" The Empress nodded miserably. "Never trust a man with a Bible name," continued the Emperor impressively. "If you do, he'll round on you. Ezekiel, Adam, Hezekiah—they're all alike, as downy as they're made. Give a child a Bible name, and he'll grow up a hypocrite. The Duchess of Southborough!"

"She's better."

"Yes; her Grace does know a good bun," rejoined the Emperor. "'Your buns are exquisite'—you remember, Henrietta? That bit of bun-praise did us more good than ever that Lady Sophia's will, I'll lay. Hon. Miss Bindler?"

No response from the Empress. No comment from the Emperor.

"Lady Drake!"

Ditto.

"Mr. Hyacinth Rodney! Fiddle-faced beast! Mr. Ingerstall! What d'you think of him, my dear?"

"Not much," said the Empress. "Not much, Perry. He sounds to me like one of those nasty little fellers that go worming themselves about in places where they've no business."

"He'd better let Mr. Harrison catch him worming himself about when he's here!" cried the Emperor with a sudden explosion of passion. "There shall be no worming here, Henrietta, if I have to go against my word and turn them all out neck and crop into the street."

In moments of emotion the imperial minds instinctively returned to early Camberwell days, and fell into the dear old Cockney habit of supposing that on making an exit from any building whatsoever, the person so doing must immediately find himself in a street. As a matter of fact, Ribton Marches stood majestically in its own grounds of some sixty acres, or thereabouts.

"Mr. James Bush!" cried the Emperor, partially recovering self-control.

There was a long pause, during which the couple regarded each other with staring eyes, that seemed turned inward in vehement self-examination. It appeared as if this name, the last on the list, carried with it a strange luggage of perplexity and confusion.

"Bush," the Emperor said at length—"James Bush. Well, Henrietta?"

"I don't know what to think of it," said the Empress. "I don't like it, Perry, I can't say I do. It's not a name I should have ever cared to marry, even when I was a foolish thing, before I took up with you and the pie-shop. No, it's not a name to marry."

The Emperor seemed greatly struck with these illuminative remarks. Yet he passed over the matrimonial demerits of Mr. Bush's name, and, with that power of coming straight to the point so characteristic of great minds, said:

"Is it a name to have in the home, Henrietta? That's the thing for us. Is it a name to have sleeping in our beds, eating off our linen, and listening to the instrument of an evening?"

The Empress wagged her head morosely in reply.

"Ah!" she said, "is it?"

"I have my doubts," the Emperor continued. "Shall we ask Mr. Harrison, my dear? We can always rely on him. He is a man that has seen the world, and can judge of a name at a first hearing."

"We might do worse," responded the Empress lachrymosely.

The Emperor pommelled the bell.

"Request Mr. Harrison to step this way," he said firmly to the footman.

In about five minutes the groom of the chambers appeared within the precincts of the hall. Mr. Harrison was remarkably well grown, and of a certain age. His hair had left him in his youth, but he retained a very red complexion, a heavy manner, and a habit of throwing out his feet, like a horse, on either side of him as he went along, which he seldom did, since he was peculiarly addicted to repose. Apparently he had been disturbed while in the active enjoyment of this peculiarity, for he entered the presence with half-open eyes, a somewhat touzled and distressed whisker, and one side of his face an entirely different colour from the other. Where ordinary menials have their "day out," Mr. Harrison had his day in bed. This day was the Sabbath; and it must be confessed that he looked ill-pleased at the tour which he had been so unexpectedly obliged to take.

"Mr. Harrison," the Emperor said, casting on the groom of the chambers a searching glance, "I believe you are a man of the world."

"I am, sir," said Mr. Harrison, half allowing and half suppressing a yawn, a circumstance which made his countenance suddenly full of contradictory expressions.

"You can judge of a name at a first hearing, Mr. Harrison, I presume?" said the Emperor.

"Sir?" said Mr. Harrison, still under the influence of slumber.

"You can tell what you think about a name the first time you hear it, I say?" rejoined the Emperor, raising his voice.

"Oh, certainly, sir!" said Mr. Harrison, arranging the whisker which had been next to the bolster with an unerring hand—"oh, most certainly!"

"Very well, then. Now, Mr. Harrison, give me your attention, if you please. I have here"—the Emperor pointed to Mr. Rodney's list—"the name James Bush." The Emperor paused, and Mr. Harrison tried to emerge from his last dream. "James Bush," repeated the Emperor.

"Indeed, sir!" said Mr. Harrison, feeling like a novice entangled in some complicated game—"indeed!"

"Well, Mr. Harrison?" said the Emperor with growing emphasis—"well?"

The groom of the chambers felt that a statement of some kind about something was undoubtedly required of him; he made a violent effort to summon his mind, and, partially succeeding, was able presently to exclaim with a good deal of determination:

"Not at all, sir—oh dear no; not at all—by no means!"

This seemed to him a remark that was adroit, and one that covered a considerable number of interrogative possibilities. Unfortunately, however, it did not appear to satisfy the requirements of the Emperor, who with some ferocity remarked:

"And what d'you mean by that, Mr. Harrison? Hah!"

The groom of the chambers was at length fully aroused by the very complex situation in which he now found himself, and, being really a man of considerable resource, he put two and two together with the swiftness of a Maxim gun.

"James Bush, sir," he said very emphatically; "oh dear no, sir! James Bush—not at all—by no means—on no account whatever!"

He had not the smallest idea what he meant, or what he was being asked, and nobody could have been more surprised than himself at the effect which his vociferous jargon created. The Emperor turned to the Empress with the manner of a man who has received his quietus.

"There, Henrietta!" he said hoarsely—"there! You see what Mr. Harrison thinks of him! And that he should come into the home! A feller like that—a feller that——" He broke off, and turned to the astounded groom of the chambers. "Mr. Harrison," he said, "we depend upon you in this affair entirely."

Mr. Harrison inclined himself in unutterable perplexity.

"Keep your eye upon him."

"Sir?"

"I say, keep your eye especially upon that feller James Bush."

"Certainly, sir."

"Don't let him be too much for you, Mr. Harrison. He may have ways; he may be such a man as Ezekiel, there's no knowing. But I hold you responsible—Mrs. Lite and me, we hold you entirely responsible for everything that man may do in the home."

The groom of the chambers, having now gathered that a person of the name of James Bush was coming into Ribton Marches, doubtless as a member of the Londoners' tribe, and that he was to be specially watched by order of the Emperor, was comparatively at ease. He inclined himself again.

"I shall see to him, sir. Depend upon me."

"We do depend upon you, Mr. Harrison—we do, don't we, Henrietta?"

"Mercy knows—we do!" sobbed the Empress.

"I shall not disappoint you, madam," said Mr. Harrison. "I shall know how to act."

"I believe that, Mr. Harrison," said the Emperor. "And I may add that if you should cop—if you should catch this feller, James Bush, at any of his games—you understand?"

"Certainly, sir."

"And if you should, as we expect, be one too many for him, we shall not forget it. You will have no reason to regret hereafter any steps that you may take. You understand?"

"Quite so, sir. I shall take them, sir, you may depend."

"Thank you, Mr. Harrison. You may go."

Mr. Harrison left the presence with dignity, and was soon back again in bed. As he laid his whisker once more on the bolster, he said to himself:

"I must take care to cop that there James Bush at some game or another, or where does the perquisite come in? Where is it?"

And murmuring thus he slept.