"How is it odd? I hope there's nothing improper about the name."

"It's not that it's improper; it's that I once met a Gregory Lamb. What sort's your Gregory Lamb?"

"He's about my own age, perhaps a little older; not ill-looking; not, I should imagine, a bad fellow in his way."

"Is he a poor man?"

"I believe his wife is very rich."

"His wife? Of course, there's the wife--and she's very rich. The rich woman who married the Gregory Lamb I know would be a very foolish female."

"Mrs. Lamb is certainly not that."

"Then her Gregory's not mine, though it's an unusual conjunction of names. I'm thinking that none but a fool of a woman would ever have married him."

[CHAPTER XVIII]

CRONIES