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monarch when the court poet is in good voice.'
    'What did The Times say?' asked Mr Busby.
    'Never mind what The Times said,' replied Joe austerely. 'Suffice it that its office boy took entirely the wrong tone. Let me tell you rather about the scenes of unrestrained enthusiasm at the end of the second act.'
    Mr Busby said that he did not wish to be told about the scenes of unrestrained enthusiasm at the end of the second act.
    'You would prefer to hear about the furore at the final curtain?'
    'Nor that, either,' said Mr Busby. Joe sighed.
    A strange mentality, yours,' he said. 'Personally, I cannot imagine a more delightful way of passing a summer morning than to sit and listen to the whole story over and over again. Still, please yourself. Just so long as you have grasped the salient point, that I am leaving you, I will go. Good-bye, Busby. God bless and keep you, and when the Society of Authors jumps out at you from behind a bush, may you always have your fingers crossed.'
    With a kindly smile, he turned and left the presence. He would have preferred to make straight for the street, where
voices were now calling the midday editions of the evening papers, but the word of a Vanringham was his bond. Mindful of his promise to Mr Busby, he directed his steps to the waiting-room, and arriving at its glass door and looking in, paused spellbound.
    Then, having straightened his tie and brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve, he opened the door and walked in.

CHAPTER 4
    T HERE were few more tastefully appointed waiting-rooms in all London than that provided for the use of his clients by Mortimer Busby So much of his business was conducted with women of the leisured class that he had aimed at creating the Mayfair-boudoir atmosphere which would make them feel at home, sparing no expense on chintz and prints, on walnut tables and soft settees, on jade ornaments and flowers in their season. Many writers had said hard things about Mr Busby from time to time, but all had had to admit that they had been extremely comfortable in his waiting-room.
    Jane Abbott, seated on one of the settees, did nothing, in Joe Vanringham's opinion, to lower the room's tone, but, rather, raised it to an entirely new level. Preparing for the interview before her, she had hesitated whether to put on all she had got and, as it were, give Mr Busby the sartorial works, in order to charm and fascinate, or to don something dowdy in order to excite commiseration. She had decided on the former course, and felt that she had acted wisely. She was feeling full of confidence, that confidence which comes to girls only when they know that their frocks are right and their hats are right and their stockings are right and their shoes are right.
    Joe, too, felt that she had acted with wisdom. Through the glass door he had stared at her like a bear at a bun, and though his breeding restrained him from doing so now, there was a stunned goggle implicit in his manner. You could see that he approved.
    'Good morning,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'
    He spoke gently, kindly, almost tenderly, and a feeling of relief swept over Jane. Tubby's words had led her to expect that she would have to deal with a gross person rather on the order of a stage moneylender, and only now did she realize that, despite the moral support of the hat, the frock, the shoes and the stockings, she had been extremely nervous. All nervousness left her as she gazed upon this gentle, kind, almost tender young man. His face, though not strictly handsome, was extraordinarily pleasant; there was a hard, attractive leanness about him; and she liked his eyes.
    'Well, to begin with, Mr Busby' she said, smiling at him as he seated himself opposite her and leaned forward with deferential cordiality in every lineament of his not strictly handsome, but very nice face, 'I must apologize for bursting in on you like this.'
    'Floating in like some lovely spirit of the summer day,' he corrected.
    'Well, bursting or floating, I