“Mabel says she knew it before that,” replied Trent, with a slightly crestfallen air. “And I thought I was acting the part of a person who was not mad about her to the life. Well, I never was any good at dissembling. I shouldn’t wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed something through his double convex lenses. But however crazy I may have been as an undeclared suitor,” he went on with a return to vivacity, “I am going to be much worse now. As for your congratulations, thank you a thousand times, because I know you mean them. You are the sort of uncomfortable brute who would pull a face three feet long if you thought we were making a mistake. By the way, I can’t help being an ass tonight; I’m obliged to go on blithering. You must try to bear it. Perhaps it would be easier if I sang you a song—one of your old favourites. What was that song you used always to be singing? Like this, wasn’t it?” He accompanied the following stave with a dexterous clog-step on the floor of the cab: “There was an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg. He had no tobacco, no tobacco could he beg. Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox, And he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box. Now for the chorus! Yes, he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box. But you’re not singing. I thought you would be making the welkin ring.” “I never sang that song in my life,” protested Mr. Cupples. “I never heard it before.” “Are you sure?” enquired Trent doubtfully. “Well, I suppose I must take your word for it. It is a beautiful song, anyhow: not the whole warbling grove in concert heard can beat it. Somehow it seems to express my feelings at the present moment as nothing else could; it rises unbidden to the lips. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells said when listening to a speech of Mr. Balfour’s.” “When was that?” asked Mr. Cupples. “On the occasion,” replied Trent, “of the introduction of the Compulsory Notification of Diseases of Poultry Bill, which ill-fated measure you of course remember. Hullo!” he broke off, as the cab rushed down a side street and swung round a corner into a broad and populous thoroughfare, “we’re there already”. The cab drew up. “Here we are,” said Trent, as he paid the man, and led Mr. Cupples into a long, panelled room set with many tables and filled with a hum of talk. “This is the house of fulfilment of craving, this is the bower with the roses around it. I see there are three bookmakers eating pork at my favourite table. We will have that one in the opposite corner.” He conferred earnestly with a waiter, while Mr. Cupples, in a pleasant meditation, warmed himself before the great fire. “The wine here,” Trent resumed, as they seated themselves, “is almost certainly made out of grapes. What shall we drink?” Mr. Cupples came out of his reverie. “I think,” he said, “I will have milk and soda water.”