Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
At the Gilded Turtle he was seated next to Peter and treated as an
honored guest. He had a misty impression that the waiters were stowed
away beneath tables and that their places were taken by Peter's friends.
He believed and asserted to the day of his death that he made the speech
of the evening--something reminiscent about “prick-cautions,” which
meandered off into moral reflections about a person named Kiss-Me-Quick
and flower-girls in general. He distinctly remembered that, more than
once, he turned his pockets inside out, asking plaintively, “What lydy
done this?” Then the gentleman whose ears moved like a dog's sang a
nonsense-song about Peter. They all joined in a rousing chorus, clinking
glasses:
“He kissed the moon's dead lips,
He googed the eye of the sun;
But when we've crawled to the end of life,
We'll wonder we ever begun.
CHORUS
“And Peter was his name--
So Peterish was he,
He wept the sun's eye back again,
Lest he should never see.”
“He fought the pirate king,
Where stars fall down with a thud;
But we, we even quake to hear
Spring rhubarb break into bud.
CHORUS
And Peter was his name, etc.
“He sailed the trackless waste
With hair the colour» of blood;
But we, we tramp the trampled streets
With souls the colour of mud.
“ And Peter was his name--
So Peterish was he,
He wept the sun's eye back again,
Lest he should never see.”
Where was Peter? Where were Harry and the Faun Man? He was out in the
streets--only the wildest of the young bloods remained with him. It
didn't matter to this cab-driving Falstaff if they all went away and
only Cat's Meat stayed, he was going to make a night of it.
Hardcastle was complaining that he'd never been arrested and taken
to Vine Street. He insisted that it ought to happen to every English
gentleman at least once. They drove back to Leicester Square to see
if they could find a policeman who'd make up this deficiency in their
education. They found three, only they chose the wrong side of the
Square and discovered that they were being taken to a less aristocratic
station. Then they explained their mistake, and their captors, being,
as the Faun Man would have said, “very human fellows,” accepted
compensation for wasted time, called them “My Lords,” and allowed them
to escape.
It was Mr. Grace who provided the final entertainment. They had grown a
little tired of his constant enquiry as to “What lydy done this?” Being
unwilling to lose their esteem as a humorist, he drove them down side
streets to a second-hand shop, which he had promised “never no more to
visit.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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