It may be mentioned that “Jan” was an assumed name and not Repton’s real baptismal prænomen. He had, in fact, been christened plain “John”; but finding the appellation unsatisfying, he replaced it by the three simple letters which gave him at once a distinction in his small circle, which the circle did not hesitate to inform him was the only one he would ever possess.
It was after an entertainment which had not been altogether satisfactory, Repton having tried to sing and Bayre to play the banjo, both with more exuberant applause than real success, that they were rearranging the furniture in its everyday position one November evening when a certain discontent which had of late been growing in Bayre’s breast reached a momentous crisis.
“I tell you what it is, Repton,” said he, as he managed, after fearful struggles, to get the fourth and last leg of the table through the door into the sitting-room, “all this beastly turn-out and turning everything upside down whenever your friends and relations put in an appearance here is perfectly sickening. Have friends by all means if you like, though Southerley and I can do without denuding half the country parishes in England of their inhabitants at regular intervals to fill our room and eat our bread-and-butter.”
“Bother your bread-and-butter!” said Repton, cheerfully, as he tilted the table over into its place in the middle of the room, and dragged on the dark green tapestry tablecloth with which it was a point of honour to cover the much-dented sham mahogany top. “You could have your own relations here if you liked, or if you’ve got any. I’m not going to let myself grow into a moping misanthrope for you, or for Southerley either, and so I tell you.”
“Nobody wants you to grow into a moping misanthrope, or into anything else you don’t like,” boomed out burly Ted Southerley from the cosy if slightly battered armchair by the fire into which he had dropped with his pipe when the ladies went away. “But I do think, Repton, for all our sakes, you might exercise the principle of judicious selection among your acquaintances, and especially you might introduce a little more variety among the ladies. Your female cousins are thoroughly charming, I admit, but they do run a little to the same type now, don’t they?”
“You have to take your cousins as you can get them,” replied Repton, cheerfully. “Some of us would be glad enough to have cousins at all; and if they were such beauties that they were run after by half London, why, you couldn’t expect them to come up to take tea with us on a second floor now, could you?”
“I shouldn’t expect it,” snapped Bayre. “And more than that, if I have to expect it now it’s not because I like it. To have to sit for two hours listening to a sandy-haired girl who can talk about nothing but the theatres and the opera, and who is trying all the time to impress you with the idea that she belongs to a circle in society where she certainly never set foot herself, and about which you yourself know little and care less, is no end of a bore.”
“She moves in a circle a precious sight better than yours!” retorted Repton, nettled. “And as for talking, she was only trying to find something to say because you were too surly to open your own mouth. And as for her being sandy—”
“I thought you didn’t like women to be intellectual, Bayre,” put in Southerley, anxious to prevent a quarrel. “I can’t make out what it is you want.”
Bayre, thus challenged, sat on the edge of the table, put his hand in his pocket, swung his leg, and laid down the law upon the subject of the Eternal Feminine thus:—