Father, an eminent
authority on postage stamps. She read a great deal in the British Museum.
(A perfect pairing ground for literary people, that British Museum--you
should read George Egerton and Justin Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and the
rest of them.) We loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightest
hopes. (All gone now.) And her father liked me because I seemed honestly
eager to hear about stamps. She had no mother. Indeed, I had the happiest
prospects a young man could have. I never went to theatres in those days.
My Aunt Charlotte before she died had told me not to.
Then Barnaby, the editor of the _Fiery Cross_, made me--in spite of
my spasmodic efforts to escape--Dramatic Critic. He is a fine, healthy
man, Barnaby, with an enormous head of frizzy black hair and a convincing
manner, and he caught me on the staircase going to see Wembly. He had been
dining, and was more than usually buoyant. "Hullo, Cummins!" he said. "The
very man I want!" He caught me by the shoulder or the collar or something,
ran me up the little passage, and flung me over the waste-paper basket
into the arm-chair in his office.
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