By Do Bahin.
Illustrations by The Misses Hammond.
“she won’t see you.”
“She won’t see you, my boy,” said Grigsby, as I stood on the steps of the Scandalmongers’ Club waiting for the next West Kensington ’bus; “she’s doing a roaring trade, and don’t want any more advertisements; and if she does she’ll put up her own notices, and not use you for billsticker.”
“Grigsby may not be right this time,” I reflected, as I scaled the ’bus. “He seldom is! And haven’t I triumphantly interviewed all the most unmanageable celebrities of the last ten years, from Lord Tennyson to the Royal baby? I suppose it’s my bland appearance. It lulls suspicion and excites curiosity. People want to see whether it is possible for any man to be such a fool as I look. Anyhow, I must go through with it now, as I’ve let it out to Grigsby.”
The fact is, I was about to try to interview Miss Jenny T. Buller, the inventress and manager of the “Brothers’ Agency,” perhaps the most important social factor of the present century. In due course I found myself opposite a smart-looking house, on whose door-plate was engraved “The Brothers’ Agency.”
Being taken no doubt for a postulant Brother, I was shown upstairs into a severe but elegant room, in the middle of which, at a huge desk loaded with papers, sat a fashionable young lady of the frailest type of Transatlantic beauty.
“Miss Buller, I believe.”