“Bless you, John,” I said, “such good things are not for me. Why, I’m nearer fifty than you’d guess, and a confirmed bachelor, sir!” “What’s your opinion of Primrose?” he asked abruptly. Primrose was his sister. I think I never heard of a woman with a more unsuitable name. It made me uncomfortable to observe how Robinson thus coupled the suggestion of my taking a wife with this question as to my opinion of his sister. “You are fortunate to have such a sister,” I said. You cannot tell the truth to a comparative stranger about his sister, unless the truth is polite. “I’m glad you think so,” answered Robinson. “I happen to know she entertains a very genuine admiration for you. She marvelled only yesterday at tea that no woman had ever won you. She said you must have made a good many hearts ache in your time.” As a matter of fact I was refused, unconditionally, by a stock-jobber’s second daughter when I was thirty-two, and that is the only glimmer of romance which ever crossed my path. But I did not tell Robinson this. I merely said that his sister was a kind soul. “Can you picture her a wife?” asked Robinson. “Very easily,” I answered, which was untrue. “Can you picture her _your_ wife?” asked Robinson. The bad taste of such a question appears upon the surface of it. “No,” I said, and then added like a fool, “Miss Robinson will aspire to a younger cavalier, and one worthier of her than I. She’d never look at an old fossil like Thomas Tarver.” “Yes, she would,” said Robinson, winking. “Faint heart never won fair lady, you know. Go in and win, my son!” I attributed it to the whisky, for Robinson was usually refined up to a certain point. To fling his own sister down another man’s throat in this way struck me as being not nice. I fought to change the conversation, and ultimately succeeded. Presently he went home, and on the following day asked me if I would meet him that evening with his sister at the Zoological Gardens. We often went thither in summer-time to drink a cup of tea and gaze upon the various wonders of animal creation gathered there. “The Lion House at six-thirty,” said Robinson, and I replied that I would not fail him. How little I foresaw my evening’s amusement! How far from the wildest nightmare flights of my imagination was the nature of that entertainment which the man John Robinson arranged for me at the Zoological Society’s Gardens. II When I arrived he was waiting in the Lion House, and I felt a relief to see that Primrose Robinson had not accompanied him. “Sit here,” he said. “I want to talk to you seriously, Tarver.” Now, the great beasts in the Lion House always affect my nerves. I know they cannot get out and all that sort of thing, but the unexpected so often happens; accidents will occur; and besides, as I explained to Robinson when asking him to step with me into the air, the spectacle of lions and tigers at feeding time is anything but pleasing to the possessor of a delicate appetite.