"Well, you don't expect a fruit to be so savage," retorted Mrs. Gainsborough. "I thought I must have aggravated a wasp. Talk about nettles. They're chammy leather beside them. Prickly pears! I suppose the next thing I try to eat will be stabbing apples." They went home by Gibraltar, where Mrs. Gainsborough was delighted to see English soldiers. "It's nice to know we've got our eyes open even in Spain. I reckon I'll get a good cup of tea here." They reached England at the end of April, and Sylvia decided to stay for a while at Mulberry Cottage. Reading through _The Stage_, she found that Jack Airdale was resting at Richmond in his old rooms, and went down to see him. He was looking somewhat thin and worried. "Had rather a rotten winter," he told her. "I got ill with a quinsey and had to throw up a decent shop, and somehow or other I haven't managed to get another one yet." "Look here, old son," Sylvia said, "I don't want any damned pride from you. I've got plenty of money at present. You've got to borrow fifty pounds. You want feeding up and fitting out. Don't be a cad now, and refuse a 'lidy.' Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You know me by this time. Who's going to be more angry, you at being lent money or me at being refused by one of the few, the very few, mark you, good pals I've got? Don't be a beast, Jack. You've got to take it." He surrendered, from habit. Sylvia gave him all her news, but the item that interested him most was her having half taken up the stage. "I knew you'd make a hit," he declared. "But I didn't." "My dear girl, you don't give yourself a chance. You can't play hide and seek with the public, though, by Jove!" he added, ruefully, "I have been lately." "For the present I can afford to wait." "Yes, you're damned lucky in one way, and yet I'm not sure that you aren't really very unlucky. If you hadn't found some money you'd have been forced to go on." "My dear lad, lack of money wouldn't make me an artist." "What would, then?" "Oh, I don't know. Being fed up with everything. That's what drove me into self-expression, as I should call it if I were a temperamental miss with a light-boiled ego swimming in a saucepan of emotion for the public to swallow or myself to crack. But conceive my disgust! There was I yearning unattainable 'isms' from a soul nurtured on tragic disillusionment, and I was applauded for singing French songs with an English accent. No, seriously, I shall try again, old Jack, when I receive another buffet. At present I'm just dimly uncomfortable. I shall blossom late like a chrysanthemum. I ain't no daffodil, I ain't. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that I was forced when young--don't giggle, you ribald ass, not that way--and I've got to give myself a rest before I bloom, _en plein air_." "But you really have got plenty of money?" Airdale inquired, anxiously. "Masses! Cataracts! And all come by perfectly honest. No, seriously, I've got about four thousand pounds."