A Knight on Wheels. Ian Hay
are twelve other appeals of a similar nature, all equally hard to resist and all equally entertaining. Subscribers, I note, are requested to place a mark opposite to the particular item of your programme to which they wish their contribution to be devoted. I confess I find my sympathy excited less by some of the appeals than by the others. For instance, I fear I cannot support your view of the desirability of providing a one-armed protégé of yours, Albert Edward Skewby, with a hurdy-gurdy. In my opinion there are only two musicians in history—Bach and Tchaikowsky—and neither of these sounds to advantage on a hurdy-gurdy. Besides, Albert probably has another arm inside his waistcoat. You look and see. Neither can I find it in my heart to support your Home of Rest for unwanted Doggies. Sausages are dear enough as it is, and if you are going to corner the market in this well-meaning but misguided fashion, I fear they will soon be out of my reach altogether.
However, some of your other appeals moved me deeply, and I confess I have experienced great difficulty in making my final choice. I was strongly attracted at first by the case of the gentleman who has just terminated a protracted visit to an inebriates' home, and who, I gather, is anxious to raise a sum sufficient to enable him to qualify for readmission at an early date. I nearly succumbed, again, to your appeal on behalf of the lady who has recently been rendered a widow by reason of the hasty and ill-considered action of a band of African cannibals. On second thoughts, however, remembering that the pangs of the good lady over the loss of her husband must be as nothing in comparison with those of the unfortunate savages who are probably still trying to digest him, I held my hand, and passed on to my final choice—the purchase of an annuity for the aged and badly-used butler, Lemuel Bloote—(what fun it must be making up names like that!)
Lemuel, I gather, has severed his connection with his employer—a nobleman to whose family and person the Blootes have been faithfully attached for more than forty years—owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding with regard to a valuable and massive service of Sheffield plate, unaccountably missing from the baronial strong-room. Lemuel naturally left the court without a stain upon his character, but wounded pride forbade him to reènter the service of his aristocratic traducer. Too old to start life afresh, too self-respecting to beg, he has thrown himself, you say, upon the compassion of the International Brotherhood of the Kind Young Hearts. I cannot resist this appeal. I set my mark against the name of Lemuel Bloote, and beg you to be so kind as to accept my cheque on his behalf. I do not know how great a sum is required to purchase an annuity for a Bloote, so I leave the cheque blank. Kindly fill it up at your discretion. I make only one stipulation. I am a collector of Sheffield plate. If Lemuel has not already disposed of his stock, perhaps you will kindly put me into direct communication with him.
Let me close with a word of advice. When you write your next batch of appeals, do not allow your sense of humour to run away with you altogether. I admire and respect a cheerful knave, but let there be moderation in all things.
Yours faithfully,
Julius Mablethorpe.
The cheque was headed Bank of Expectation, and bore the somewhat unexpected signature of the head of the house of Rothschild. It was drawn to the order of A. S. Windeller, Esq., and was dated April the First, 2013.
"I should like to meet that fellow," said Uncle Joseph appreciatively.
"So should I," said Philip.
His uncle looked up.
"Hallo!" he said. "Is your sense of humour beginning to sprout, Philip? You are growing up, my boy. How old are you?"
"Nearly fifteen," said Philip.
"Well, you don't look it, but you possess certain attainments which a young man of thirty might envy. In other respects you must be considered backward. But you are an excellent secretary, you can keep accounts, and you are exceptionally well up in English literature and modern science. I have directed you to the best of my ability in the right way of life. At any rate, I have kept you away from wrong influences. You are healthy in body and prompt in mind, and you are thoroughly inoculated against the female virus. Now your sense of humour is developing. You should go far. But we are wasting time. Let us polish off Aubrey Buck's correspondence, and then I will dictate to you one or two new letters which I have drafted. Your attention appears to be wandering. What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing in particular, Uncle Joseph," said Philip. He took up his pen briskly.
But for all that he had been thinking about something in particular. Uncle Joseph's reference to the female virus had brought it to his mind. It was a little girl in a blue cotton frock.
CHAPTER II
LE PREMIER PAS
Having disposed of the Reverend Aubrey Buck's correspondence—it was not so bulky as on previous occasions, for evidently the paragraph in the "Searchlight" had dealt its originator a mortal blow—uncle and nephew sat down to an excellent luncheon, cooked and served by James Nimmo. No woman ever crossed the threshold of the house in Hampstead.
James Nimmo had originally been a ship's steward, and his conversion to misogynistic principles had been effected comparatively late in life. Always a man of thrifty disposition, he had shirked the responsibility and expense of matrimony until he had attained the ripe age of forty. Then he fell a sudden and abject captive to the charms of a damsel of Carnoustie, half his age. The match was struck, but it was stipulated by the girl's parents that the wedding should not take place until after James Nimmo's next voyage.
Before sailing, the prospective bridegroom handed over to his beloved the greater part of his savings, to be expended in the purchase and outfitting of a suitable establishment—to wit, a bijou villa in Broughty Ferry—in order that the honeymoon might commence without unavoidable delay upon his return.
Eight weeks later James Nimmo sailed into the Tay, to find his turtle-dove flown. Alarmed possibly by the unrest produced in the real property market by recent legislation, the lady had forborne to purchase the bijou villa. Having no house, to spend money upon furniture was obviously a work of supererogation. Lastly, inspired possibly by a yearning for a wider field in which to exercise her undoubted talents, the affianced of James Nimmo had decided to emigrate to Canada. This decision she promptly put into execution, departing without due ostentation in the steerage of an Allan liner, and taking with her her parents, James Nimmo's savings, and a young carpenter of steady habits and good wage-earning capacity whom she had married three days previously.
Six months later James Nimmo made the acquaintance of Uncle Joseph on board a P. & O. liner, homeward bound from Bombay. James was deck-steward on that voyage, and Uncle Joseph's attention was first attracted to him by the extreme coldness, not to say hauteur, with which he attended to the wants of seasick lady passengers. James Nimmo on his part noted with grim approval the whole-hearted fashion in which Uncle Joseph, who was a presentable bachelor of thirty-six in those days, boycotted the long row of chairs in the lee of the deckhouses, and confined himself to the smoking-room or the windward side of the ship.
One hot night in the Red Sea a chance remark of Uncle Joseph's unlocked the heart and loosed the tongue of James Nimmo, and before dawn the whole of the tale of the fickle beauty of Carnoustie had been told, for the first and last time, to mortal man.
At Tilbury James Nimmo resigned his post and abandoned the service of the sea, in order to follow Uncle Joseph. Since that day they had never been parted. All this had happened more than ten years ago.
Philip had been added to the household at Hampstead a few days after Uncle Joseph had landed at Tilbury—in fact, it was on Philip's account that Uncle Joseph had come home—and from that moment he had lived and breathed in a society exclusively masculine. He still retained recollections of the period when petticoats ruled him, but they were very faint, for his nursery days had ended abruptly at the tender age of four.
Sometimes, though, he had visions. He saw dimly a stout, autocratic,