V.
ON THE STRENUOUSNESS OF LIFE.
It was on a Wednesday morning that I repaired to the Maison Squiff and found Freddy in a well-worn blazer perusing a coroneted letter signed ‘Paunbrough,’ which he silently handed me to read. I discovered that it was a communication from the noble owner of Coffington Castle, County Down, enclosing Butler’s bill with a dirty card attached. The latter enquired in terms more direct than polite why the hot place Freddy had been distributing his father’s cards about Oxford, and stated that he, the noble Earl, was condemned if he would pay thirty shillings for a bouquet to a low ballet girl. It concluded with the final slap that Messrs. Swindell and Rooke, the family solicitors, had instructions not to pay over another monthly allowance until they received Butler’s bill receipted. This crushing communication was pointedly signed ‘Your loving father,’ and a postscript demanded the return of any more of his Lordship’s cards which Freddy might have purloined.
‘Rather rough,’ I said, ‘but you can go on for another month anyhow, yesterday was the First.’
‘Not much,’ said Freddy, ‘the governor’s sharper than you’d think to look at him, and he telegraphed to the sharks to stop my instalment yesterday.’
While we were discussing this trying situation, Mrs. Corker appeared bearing a blue envelope which she shot into my lap. It was addressed to—
Viscount Gilderdale,
129 St. Aldate’s, Oxford,
and so I handed it on to Freddy, who courageously opened it. The contents proved to be merely an official confirmation of the noble lord’s own letter, which, as Freddy ruefully observed, was ‘rather like rubbing it in.’