"Stop the cab!" he roared; "there's a man on the track of my cats!"
"Nonsense, my dear fellow; it's only a person who'll want sixpence for not helping with the luggage."
"Are you sure?" asked Jack suspiciously. "How do you know he isn't a professional cat-stealer? I must ask the cabman if they are all right!" He did so, and was reassured.
"We're almost at the hotel now," said Claude, with misgivings; he was bitterly anticipating the sensation to be caused there by the arrival of such a Duke of St. Osmund's, and wondering whether it would be of any use suggesting a further period of incognito.
"Nearly there, are we? Then see here," said Jack, "I've got something to insist on. I mean to have my way about one matter."
Claude groaned inwardly.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I'll tell you straight. I'm not going to do the Dook in this hotel. I'm plain Jack Dillamore, or I don't go in."
The delight of this deliverance nearly overcame the poet.
"I think you're wise," was all he trusted himself to say. "I should be inclined to take the same course were I in your place. You will escape a great deal of the sort of adulation which turneth the soul sick. And for one night, at all events, you will be able, as an alien outsider, to form an unprejudiced opinion of our unlovely metropolis."