But to get back to “Lal” and his stories. The majority of these were, I have every reason to believe, “made up” by Brough. Everything was in the telling. One of them occurs to me now. A certain young married couple had been rendered very unhappy by the betting habits of the husband. They had an only boy of some seven summers. They were in debt all over the place. The servant had been discharged. There was little food in the house. At this tragic juncture a cheque for forty pounds arrived. The relieved and delighted husband embraced his wife and hurried off to the city to “melt” the cheque, promising to return immediately, settle all outstanding accounts, and take the family out to dinner. There was racing at Kempton that day, and the unfortunate man knew of one or two “certs.” So when he had received the proceeds of the cheque, he ran down to Kempton Park, fired with the benevolent idea of doubling, or even quadrupling, his forty pounds. The usual thing happened. Far from winning, he dropped every sou, and returned home a sad, despairing man. He hoped for sympathy from his wife; but, for the first time in their married existence, the wife rose to the occasion, and, in unmistakable terms, denounced her stricken and shamefaced spouse. He slunk from the room, and silently closed the door behind him. She heard him mount the stairs. But her heart was hardened against him. Ten minutes after the exit of the gambler her little golden-haired blue-eyed boy dashed into the room. “Oh, mummy!” he cried, in his eager, happy way, “daddy’s cut hisself shavin’.” “H-h-h-has he cut himself much?” asked the woman, rising. “Cut hisself much!” exclaimed the innocent child; “he’s cut his bally head off!” Brough used to tell another story in which the same note of exaggeration was the salient characteristic. It had to do with a Scotsman and a kilt, and afforded a sort of current phrase in his clubs for a time. The quoted phrase was: “I’m a maun o’ few wor-r-r-ds!” The story is not of the kind that can easily be conveyed in cold print. Some years before his death I went into the Eccentric Club with him. There had been a considerable making of theatrical knights at or about the time; and when we entered the club-room, we found a smart young journalist of the new school inveighing against the knighting of stage folk. Brough, who did not care a red cent one way or the other, but who felt himself bound to stick up for his order, asked: “But why should not actors be made knights?” “Because,” answered the adolescent Fleet Streeter, with professional glibness, “they belong to a wandering, a nomadic, race.” “Sort of Arabian knights, I suppose,” suggested Brough, closing the discussion with the acquiescent ridicule that kills.