The Story of Louie

Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Author of In Accordance With the Evidence, The Debit Account, etc.
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK
Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton
TO GWLADYS

In an old number of Punch , under the heading Society's New Pet: The Artist's Model, is to be found a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the descriptive text runs:
And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear Miss Dragon?
Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him in a cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone called as wished to see him most particular; so he said: 'Don't move, Miss Dragon, or you'll disturb the cestus.' 'Very good, sir,' I said, and off he went; and when he come back in an hour and a 'alf or so he said: 'You've moved, Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You ' ave !' he said. 'I 'aven't!' I said—and no more I 'adn't, your Grace. And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him good-morning, an' I never been near him since!
Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the newness of this craze of Society's. If he was right, the Honourable Emily Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer. Let there be set down, here in the beginning, the plain facts of how, a good ten years before the indignant Miss Dragon offed with Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable Emily found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia and Mayfair.
Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master, had only a short currency. It was probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the years 1862-1867; and as Buck Causton he attained some celebrity when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.