“Bear up sir,” cried a black waiter kindly. “It is only their way being a school of poetry.”
“Oh,” cried Selia blowing her nose, “I would like to go to such a school, wouldnt you, Harold, though not to their nasty stuck up one, eh?”
“In sooth, yes,” he answered with effervessence. “It would be very useful to us I am sure, to deal with such strumpets and aristocracy.”
“Ah, sir, if you will excuse me,” put in the waiter now beaming like a holy angel with his [27] ]sooty features. “You will soon be all right. There are just the little matters like eating and that which are very catchy and the right words to say.”
“
You see this lot thats just gone out are all very artful people, who speak to no one but print little books of their poems all the while, and wont sell them to anybody at all, and that makes them very slippery customers to deal with, as no one knows what they are really at, and mean too,” he added, looking beneath their plates where a solitary sixpence graced the deserted board.
“Take that my good negro” cried Mr. Withersq slipping a green paper money in his quaintly coloured palm.
So when they had looked up an address in the book, they set out for a nice school where to learn poetry and so climb.
CHAPTER FOUR[28]
There was the bust of a dog in the front yard of the school of poetry and the door was pink.