This particular afternoon--in the autumn of ’20--Brother Burges, P. M., was on duty and, finding a strong shift present, took advantage of it to strip and dust all hangings and curtains, to go over every inch of the Pavement--which was stone, not floorcloth--by hand; and to polish the Columns, Jewels, Working outfit and organ. I was given to clean some Officer’s Jewels--beautiful bits of old Georgian silver-work humanised by generations of elbow-grease--and retired to the organ loft; for the floor was like the quarter-deck of a battleship on the eve of a ball. Half-a-dozen brethren had already made the Pavement as glassy as the aisle of Greenwich Chapel; the brazen chapiters winked like pure gold at the flashing Marks on the Chairs; and a morose one-legged brother was attending to the Emblems of Mortality with, I think, rouge. “They ought,” he volunteered to Brother Burges as we passed, “to be betwixt the colour of ripe apricots an’ a half-smoked meerschaum. That’s how we kept ’em in my Mother-Lodge--a treat to look at.” “I’ve never seen spit-and-polish to touch this,” I said. “Wait till you see the organ,” Brother Burges replied. “You could shave in it when they’ve done. Brother Anthony’s in charge up there--the taxi-owner you met here last month. I don’t think you’ve come across Brother Humberstall, have you?” “I don’t remember----” I began. “You wouldn’t have forgotten him if you had. He’s a hairdresser now, somewhere at the back of Ebury Street. ’Was Garrison Artillery. ’Blown up twice.” “Does he show it?” I asked at the foot of the organ-loft stairs. “No-o. Not much more than Lazarus did, I expect.” Brother Burges fled off to set some one else to a job. Brother Anthony, small, dark, and hump-backed, was hissing groom-fashion while he treated the rich acacia-wood panels of the Lodge organ with some sacred, secret composition of his own. Under his guidance Humberstall, an enormous, flat-faced man, carrying the shoulders, ribs, and loins of the old Mark ’14 Royal Garrison Artillery, and the eyes of a bewildered retriever, rubbed the stuff in. I sat down to my task on the organ-bench, whose purple velvet cushion was being vacuum-cleaned on the floor below. “Now,” said Anthony, after five minutes’ vigorous work on the part of Humberstall. “_Now_ we’re gettin’ somethin’ worth lookin’ at! Take it easy, an’ go on with what you was tellin’ me about that Macklin man.” “I--I ’adn’t anything against ’im,” said Humberstall, “excep’ he’d been a toff by birth; but that never showed till he was bosko absoluto. Mere bein’ drunk on’y made a common ’ound of ’im. But when bosko, it all came out. Otherwise, he showed me my duties as mess-waiter very well on the ’ole.” “Yes, yes. But what in ’ell made you go _back_ to your Circus? The Board gave you down-an’-out fair enough, you said, after the dump went up at Eatables?”