“That is the great Midsummer Jinks ceremony of the Bohemian Club. They have it every year, and never invite outsiders. So I was bound I’d see it anyhow.”
“I wonder you don’t become a member.”
“Oh, I’m too young,” promptly.
“Tell me more about it. What do these ceremonies mean?”
“Oh, they put all sorts of things into that caldron—the liver of a grasshopper with one of Harry Armstrong’s jokes; the wasted paint on somebody’s last picture with the misshapen feet of somebody’s else latest verse. The corpse is an effigy of Care, and they are cremating him. Now they’ll be happy, that is to say, drunk, till morning, for Care is dead. I’m going to stop and see it out.”
“I think you had better go home.”
“Indeed?” Clive saw the hand that shielded her face jerk.
“Did you ever see, or rather hear a lot of men on a lark when they fancied that no women were about?”
“No; but that is what I wish to do.”
“Which you are not going to do to-night.”