I swear she blushed, and I felt more than a little envious of the nature which could convert such a vinegary attempt at condescension into a gallantry. "F'what would I be doing, taking dinner wid a child like you?" I was twenty-five, but Mrs. Mulvaney looked on all men as equally immature. "And have you not got no friends?" she went on, but I stopped her with a gesture. "Thank Heaven--no!" I said. "I am one of intellectuality's hermits. An educated man in London is like the bell-cow of the herd--a thing apart." "You're a great fool, I'm afther thinking." "The foolish always damn the wise," I answered, with an attempt at epigrammatic misquotation. Mrs. Mulvaney heaved a sigh. Its very forcefulness recalled the nautical meaning of the verb. "You'd be a sight happier outside," she said. "Holy Mary knows I wouldn't be driving you into the streets, but I'm worried you'd get cross wid yourself at home." To get rid of her, I put on my coat and went out. Perhaps she was right; things would have been intolerable at home. Home! Such a travesty of the word! The sickly lamplight of Sloane Square was preferable. "Merry Christmas, guv'nor!" said the road-sweeper. "Merry fiddlesticks!" I growled, and gave him sixpence. I tried to avoid the vender of newspapers, but he spotted my fur collar with the instinct of a mendicant, handing me a paper and his blessing. "'Appy Christmas, milord!" said he. I paid him a shilling for his diplomacy. Thinking to escape the match-woman, I altered my course, but with the intuition of her sex she contrived to put herself directly in my path. "It's a cauld nicht," she moaned in a rickety, quavering Scottish voice--"a cauld, wintry nicht. Ye'll be haein' a wee box o' matches, aw'm thinkin'!" I gave her twopence for them, and she shivered with cold as her skinny fingers clutched the coins. I can think of no excuse for my parsimony except the fact that I didn't need the wretched box--matches were not yet a luxury of the very exclusive. Yes--in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day! It is not easy, even now, to write of those days. The figure that crosses the screen of memory reminds me of Chevy Slyme--a debt-paying, respectable Chevy Slyme, forsooth!--but just as sulkily swaggering, just as superior, and not quite so human; for Chevy, at least, inspired the friendship of Mr. Tigg. II