“No report of the smoker?” said George, greatly indignant. “And why not? Ain’t we boys at the club subscribers? Ain’t we got any rights? Listen, son, just tell me one thing; you’ve heard about the freedom of the Press?”

“Sure, sure,” said Rumball uneasily.

“OK then, why don’t the smoker get a write-up?”

“Well, it was a private performance, Mr Morphew.”

“You’re damn right it was private. So what were you doing there, sticking your nose into it?”

“Well, as I said, Mr Shillito asked me to go to see what Mr Higgin was doing, and to see if I could write something about it.”

“Now lookit,” said George pugnaciously, “about this freedom of the Press. That means the club has as much right to a plug in the paper as anybody, don’t it? And if not, just kindly tell me why not, will ya? Just explain.”

“Don’t get excited, George,” said Higgin. “It was a private show. And a very good thing too. Oh, if you could have seen George!” He giggled rapturously.

“I was good, wasn’t I?” said George, restored to good humour. He was not entirely drunk, but he was in a variable mood, and there were traces of greasepaint on his face.

“You were sensational,” said Mr Higgin, giggling again.

“What’d you sing, Georgie?” asked Kitten, who had surveyed all of this with complacency.

“The ones I practised,” said George, then winked at Higgin and went off into a fit of laughter so great that he fell into his wife’s chair. When they had sorted themselves out, he was sitting in the chair and Kitten was in his lap, her coral toes hanging over the arm.

“Oh, but it was the encores,” said Mr Higgin, bubbling with mirth. “That was where he really had them, eh, Mr Rumball?”

“Yes, I guess it was,” said Rumball.

“ ‘I’ll be up ‘er flue next week,’ “ sang George, loudly, and collapsed in laughter.

“What?” cried Kitten, who had caught the infection and was laughing herself, without knowing why.

“It’s his song,” said Higgin, wiping his eyes. “He sings it in the character of a chimney-sweep. It’s all about his work, you see, and that’s the refrain—’I’ll be up ‘er flue next week”—and the meanings people seem to see in it, you’d never think! What we in the profession call the double entendre,” he said to Edith, feeling that she should be included in the gaiety, if possible on a higher level of culture than the others. But Ede merely snorted.

“I’d like to get along now, if that’s all right?” said Rumball.

“Yes, of course. You wanted to see my press-cutting book. I’ll get it at once,” said Higgin, and trotted up the stairs.

“I’ll expect to see something in the paper about the show tonight,” said George, in a loud, bantering tone. “We got some influence, you know. Ede here’s got influence on The Bellman, ain’t that right, Ede?”

“George, that’ll do,” said Edith, with dignity.

“ ‘I’ll be up ‘er flue next week,’ “ sang George, sotto voce, and pinched Kitten from below. She slapped him playfully and they scuffled under the embarrassed eyes of Mr Rumball until Bevill Higgin came downstairs, carrying a large press-cutting book.

“Here it is,” said he. “A complete record of my career, with photographs, clippings, programmes—all dated and arranged in proper order. You will be very careful with it, won’t you? All my life I have been methodical. I cannot bear to part with any of my little clippings from the past. A few may be loose in the book. When you have done with it, if you will give me a call, I’ll pick it up at The Bellman offices myself. Please, please be careful. This is my life,” he said, patting the volume with a wistful charm which no one but Edith fully appreciated.

“Yes, I’ll be careful,” said Rumball, and then, nervously to the others, “well, good night, everybody.”

“Remember, we got influence!” shouted George, as the door closed behind the reporter.

“Do you really think you’ll get a write-up?” asked Edith very seriously when, a little later, they had all been accommodated with glasses of rye from the bottle which Georgie produced from his bundle of costumes. “It would be wonderful publicity, Bev—bring you all kinds of pupils.”

“I have hopes,” said Mr Higgin demurely. “My friend Mr Shillito is, so to speak, editor emeritus of the newspaper; I have been given to understand that he carries very great influence—very great. He thinks something should be done. Of course, that young man will write his critique on what he finds in my cuttings-book. Tonight’s work was not my best line, of course.”

“Oh yes it was,” said George, “that’s the stuff the public wants. You got to give the public what it wants. And it wants the heart sniff and the funny stuff. This arty stuff is all baloney.”

“Listen to who’s talking,” said Edith.

“Yeah? Well, if you’d heard how I went over tonight you’d change your tune, Ede. Bev says I got talent and I guess tonight I proved it, eh, Bev?”

“Oh, no doubt about it,” said Mr Higgin, and giggled again. “You ladies should have heard him. Or no—perhaps you shouldn’t have heard him. But for a male audience it was a treat, really it was.”

“Well, I kind of half hope you don’t get a write-up in the old Bellman,” said Kitten. “Because if you do you’ll get so many pupils and be so famous we’ll lose you from here, and I’d certainly hate that.”

“Oh, you dear creature,” said Mr Higgin, tittering.

“Yes, and what would Earl do without his Ugga Bev?” said Edith, throwing him a glance heavy with solicitous motherhood.

“Oh, my dears, you must never believe that I would leave you,” said Mr Higgin, and though he looked tenderly toward Kitten, it was Edith’s hand that he patted. “I’ve come to look upon this as my own family. I have indeed. And you can never know what that means to a weary, wayworn wanderer such as myself.” There was a tear in his eye.

“Well, Bev, I guess we all understand that, and I know I speak for the girls as well as me when I say that we feel the same in regards to you,” said George, whose tipsiness had suddenly taken a formal turn.

“Sure, Bev, we know how tough it is to make your way in a new country and all that,” said Kitten.

“Yes, we have to remember that everybody was new in Canada once,” said Edith, and then, suddenly, the gathering rose from this solemn and somewhat literary note to a higher plane of enjoyment. The rye went round again, and for a third time, and then Mr Higgin sang Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, and the Morphews and Edith, as befitted his pupils, provided harmonies of uncertain character but of rich intent. By the time they went to bed all their hearts were high and full.

Edith hummed the lovely Irish air as she undressed, and returning from the bathroom she heard its strains from the door of the Morphews’ bedroom. She hummed it still as she stood before her mirror, and arranged her hair in metal curlers, which stood out like a chevaux-de-frise around her face. It was a caressing air, and its gentle melancholy aroused agreeably painful feelings in her breast. The way Kitten was always at her about men! But she wasn’t the sort to throw herself at anybody that came along, or settle for a big loudmouth like George. Love, if she were ever to feel it (for she had long since decided that her feeling for Robert Little had not been the Real Thing) would be something fine, gentle and wistful. She couldn’t bear a man to whom she was nothing but a Body as, quite unjustly, she supposed that her sister was to George. Her love, if and when it came, would be a thing of Mind, of Soul.

There was a very gentle tap at her door. Supposing it to be Kitten she opened it, and Mr Higgin slipped quickly into the room. He was in his pyjamas and a dressing-gown, and with his pink face and small stature he looked like a small boy.