[CHAPTER XIII]
WILLIS'S ROOMS (KING STREET)
I was getting to the end of a tiring day in a dingy office in Fleet Street, and the little printer's devil, who was sitting on a chair in the corner by the fire playing cat's-cradle, had brought word that all that was now wanted from me were a few short notes.
It is not easy when one is brain-tired to be playfully humorous as to the European Concert, and I had struggled through a few lines, only to lay down my pen and take up a bundle of exchanges and a pair of scissors, when one of the clerks in the outer office brought me in a card and a letter. The card was that of Miss Madge Morgan, with below in a feminine handwriting "George Swanston Clarke," and the letter was from an old schoolfellow and friend, a banker in a country town, asking me to put Miss Morgan in the way of seeing one or two places in London which she wished to visit. Somehow the "George Swanston Clarke" seemed familiar, so I told the clerk that I would be out in a moment, the scissors went "click, click, click," the printer's devil was dispatched with a silent malediction, my day's work was done, and I went out to greet Miss Morgan and bring her into the office.
She was a very neat and very tidy little person, of a neatness of dress that was almost primness; but she had dark-brown hair parted in the middle, with a shine of gold where it rippled, and dark-brown eyes with a glint of fun in them that were a relief to her general sense of earnestness.
I gave her our best chair and asked what I could do for her. It had been my bad luck, it seems, to have to send "George Swanston Clarke" back a short story; but I had added a few words, which were not unkind, to the usual formula and that had emboldened her to ask our mutual friend for an introduction. She had come up from the country town where she was one of the chief teachers at the ladies' college to get some local colour for a novel she was going to write.
I murmured that I should be delighted to do anything I could to help her, and she explained: The novel is to be called "The Education of an Angel." The principal characters in the book are to be two good angels and two bad angels sent again to earth, and, as she wished to be up-to-date, she particularly wanted to see behind the scenes of a variety theatre, where the temptation was to take place, and the Amphitryon Club, where the hero and heroine first meet at dinner.
I promised her an introduction to Mr. Hitchens, of the Empire, and Mr. Slater, of the Alhambra, smiling mentally at the disappointment in store for her, for "behind the scenes" at the two big variety theatres is ruled with an iron discipline, and told her I was sorry that, as the Amphitryon had ceased to exist, I could not help her in that.