Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Watcher turned simultaneously at this outrageous admission to glare at the inspector of nuisances. Unfortunately Mr. Hopkins turned his head to the left and Mr. Watcher turned his head to the right, so that their eyes met, and instead of glaring at Mr. Breadcutt they glared at each other. “Well, I’m going to call on Mr. Fuller for a song,” said Mrs. Pottage. She apologised later for thus dragging him into a performance on his night off. “But really,” she said, “I thought Hopkins and Watcher was going to fly at one another. They looked like a couple of boxing kangaroos.” Bram obliged the flattered company with two or three songs which Nancy accompanied on the ancient piano, the noise of which was the occasion of another apology by the hostess. “More like teeth clicking than music, isn’t it? Well, it hasn’t really been used since the year dot excepting for a bookcase. It belonged to my dear old dad, and he only bought it to cover up a spot in the wall where the roof leaked. He couldn’t bear music, the dear old man. When he was over seventy, he nearly got fined for squirting a syringe full of the stuff he washed his greenhouse with into the big end of a cornet and which a blind man was playing outside his house. Of course, as he explained, he wasn’t to know the pore fellow was blind or he’d have spoke before he spouted. But _I’m_ very fond of music, I am.” And to prove her sincerity Mrs. Pottage sang _Two Lovely Black Eyes_, a performance which so utterly convulsed Mrs. Bugbird that she fell off her chair, and sat undulating on the floor for nearly five minutes, until the united efforts of the male guests got her back again, when in order to deal with the moisture induced by such excess of mirth, she had to produce her reserve handkerchief, on which was printed a gruesome picture of the execution of Mr. and Mrs. Manning. Then Nancy sang to Bram’s accompaniment, after which Bram gave imitations of familiar animals to the intense pleasure of Mr. Breadcutt, who slapped his leg and declared he was a blooming marvel. “George!” snapped his wife. “Yes, my dear?” “Don’t swear!” “Blooming isn’t swearing.” “It’s as near as not to be worth an argument,” she said severely. This caused Mr. Breadcutt to wink at Mr. Watcher, who thought he was winking at Mrs. Pottage and did not respond. Then Mr. Hopkins tried to remember for the benefit of the company what he assured everybody was a capital game that he often used to play at social gatherings twenty years ago.