A visit to a neighboring music-hall occurred to him as a suitable
sedative. Hardly had his nerves ceased to quiver sufficiently to allow
him to begin to enjoy the performance, when, in the interval between two
of the turns, a man rose in one of the side boxes.
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
There was a hush in the audience. All eyes were directed toward the box.
A man in the stalls rose, blushing, and cleared his throat.
“My wife has fainted,” continued the speaker. “She has just discovered
that she has lost her copy of 'Squibs.'”
The audience received the statement with the bovine stolidity of an
English audience in the presence of the unusual.
Not so Roland. Even as the purposeful-looking chuckers-out wended their
leopard-like steps toward the box, he was rushing out into the street.
As he stood cooling his indignation in the pleasant breeze which had
sprung up, he was aware of a dense crowd proceeding toward him. It was
headed by an individual who shone out against the drab background like a
good deed in a naughty world. Nature hath framed strange fellows in her
time, and this was one of the strangest that Roland's bulging eyes had
ever rested upon. He was a large, stout man, comfortably clad in a suit
of white linen, relieved by a scarlet 'Squibs' across the bosom. His
top-hat, at least four sizes larger than any top-hat worn out of a
pantomime, flaunted the same word in letters of flame. His umbrella,
which, tho the weather was fine, he carried open above his head, bore
the device “One penny weekly”.
The arrest of this person by a vigilant policeman and Roland's dive into
a taxicab occurred simultaneously. Roland was blushing all over. His
head was in a whirl. He took the evening paper handed in through
the window of the cab quite mechanically, and it was only the strong
exhortations of the vendor which eventually induced him to pay for it.
This he did with a sovereign, and the cab drove off.
He was just thinking of going to bed several hours later, when it
occurred to him that he had not read his paper. He glanced at the
first page. The middle column was devoted to a really capitally written
account of the proceedings at Bow Street consequent upon the arrest
of six men who, it was alleged, had caused a crowd to collect to the
disturbance of the peace by parading the Strand in the undress of Zulu
warriors, shouting in unison the words “Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy 'Squibs.'”
* * * * *
Young Mr. Petheram greeted Roland with a joyous enthusiasm which the
hound Argus, on the return of Ulysses, might have equalled but could
scarcely have surpassed.
It seemed to be Mr. Petheram's considered opinion that God was in His
Heaven and all was right with the world. Roland's attempts to correct
this belief fell on deaf ears.
“Have I seen the advertisements?” he cried, echoing his editor's first
question. “I've seen nothing else.”
“There!” said Mr. Petheram proudly.
“It can't go on.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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