I had it typed, and I said, “Price, my boy, there’s more Mr. Cloyster in this than ever Mr. Cloyster could have put into it.” And the editor of the _Strawberry Leaf_ printed it next issue as a matter of course. I say, “as a matter of course” with intention, because the fellows at the “Moon” took it as a matter of course, too. You see, when it first appeared, I left the copy about the desk in the New Business Room, hoping Tommy Milner or some of them would rush up and congratulate me. But they didn’t. They simply said, “Don’t litter the place up, old man. Keep your papers, if you _must_ bring ’em here, in your locker downstairs.” One of them _did_ say, I fancy, something about its “not being quite up to my usual.” They didn’t know it was my maiden effort at original composition, and I couldn’t tell them. It was galling, you’ll admit. However, I quickly forgot my own troubles in wondering what Mr. Cloyster was doing. No editor, I foresaw, would accept his society stuff as long as mine was in the market. They wouldn’t pay for Cloyster whilst they were offered the refusal of super-Cloyster. Wasn’t likely. You must understand I wasn’t over-easy in my conscience about the affair. I had, in a manner of speaking, pinched Mr. Cloyster’s job. But then, I argued to myself, he was earning quite as much as was good for any one man by his serious verse. And at that very minute our slavey, little Ethelbertina, knocked at my bedroom door and gave me a postcard. It was addressed to me in thick, straggly writing, and was so covered with thumb-marks that a Bertillon expert would have gone straight off his nut at the sight of it. “My usbend,” began the postcard, “as received yourn. E as no truk wif the other man E is a pots imself an e can do a job of potry as orfen as e ’as a mine to your obegent servent Ada Blake. P.S. me an is ole ant do is writin up for im.” So then I saw how that “Cry” thing in the _St. Stephen’s_ had come there. You heard me give my opinion about telling Norah my past life. Well, you’ll agree with me now that there’s practically nothing to tell her. There _is_, of course, little Miss Richards, the waitress in the smoking-room of the Piccadilly Cabin. Her, I mean, with the fuzzy golden hair done low. You’ve often exchanged “Good evening” with her, I’m sure. Her hair’s done low: she used to make rather a point of telling me that. Why, I don’t know, especially as it was always tidy and well off her shoulders. And then there was the haughty lady who sold programmes in the Haymarket Amphitheatre—but she’s got the sack, so Cookson informs me. Therefore, as I shall tell Norah plainly that I disapprove of the Cabin, the past can hatch no egg of discord in the shape of the Cast-Off Glove. The only thing that I can think of as needing suppression is the part I played in Mr. Cloyster’s system.