Madge went on chattering in her usual lively manner, and Brian listened to her with delight. Her pleasant talk drove away the evil spirit which had been with him for the last three weeks. Suddenly Madge made an observation as they were passing the Burke and Wills’ monument, which startled him.
“Isn’t that the place where Mr Whyte got into the cab?” she asked, looking at the corner near the Scotch Church, where a vagrant of musical tendencies was playing “Just before the Battle, Mother,” on a battered old concertina.
“So the papers say,” answered Brian, listlessly, without turning his head.
“I wonder who the gentleman in the light coat could have been,” said Madge, as she settled herself again.
“No one seems to know,” he replied evasively.
“Ah, but they have a clue,” she said. “Do you know, Brian,” she went on, “that he was dressed just like you in a light overcoat and soft hat?”
“How remarkable,” said Fitzgerald, speaking in a slightly sarcastic tone, and as calmly as he was able. “He was dressed in the same manner as nine out of every ten young fellows in Melbourne.”
Madge looked at him in surprise at the tone in which he spoke, so different from his usual nonchalant way of speaking. She was about to answer when the carriage stopped at the door of the Melbourne Club. Brian, anxious to escape any more remarks about the murder, sprang quickly out, and ran up the steps into the building. He found Mr. Frettlby smoking complacently, and reading the AGE. As Fitzgerald entered he looked up, and putting down the paper, held out his hand, which the other took.
“Ah! Fitzgerald,” he said, “have you left the attractions of Collins Street for the still greater ones of Clubland?”
“Not I,” answered Brian. “I’ve come to carry you off to afternoon tea with Madge and myself.”
“I don’t mind,” answered Mr. Frettlby rising; “but, isn’t afternoon tea at half-past one rather an anomaly?”
“What’s in a name?” said Fitzgerald, absently, as they left the room. “What have you been doing all morning?”
“I’ve been in here for the last half-hour reading,” answered the other, carelessly.
“Wool market, I suppose?”
“No, the hansom cab murder.”
“Oh, d—— that thing!” said Brian, hastily; then, seeing his companion looking at him in surprise, he apologised. “But, indeed,” he went on, “I’m nearly worried to death by people asking about Whyte, as if I knew all about him, whereas I know nothing.”
“Just as well you don’t,” answered Mr. Frettlby, as they descended the steps together; “he was not a very desirable companion.”
It was on the tip of Brian’s tongue to say, “And yet you wanted him to marry your daughter,” but he wisely refrained, and they reached the carriage in silence.
“Now then, papa,” said Madge, when they were all settled in the carriage, and it was rolling along smoothly in the direction of East Melbourne, “what have you been doing?”
“Enjoying myself,” answered her father, “until you and Brian came, and dragged me out into this blazing sunshine.”
“Well, Brian has been so good of late,” said Madge, “that I had to reward him, so I knew that nothing would please him better than to play host.”
“Certainly,” said Brian, rousing himself out of a fit of abstraction, “especially when one has such charming visitors.”
Madge laughed at this, and made a little grimace.
“If your tea is only equal to your compliments,” she said lightly, “I’m sure papa will forgive us for dragging him away from his club.”
“Papa will forgive anything,” murmured Mr. Frettlby, tilting his hat over his eyes, “so long as he gets somewhere out of the sun. I can’t say I care about playing the parts of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace of a Melbourne hot day.”
“There now, papa is quite a host in himself,” said Madge mischievously, as, the carriage drew up at Mrs. Sampson’s door.
“No, you are wrong,” said Brian, as he alighted and helped her out; “I am the host in myself this time.”
“If there is one thing I hate above another,” observed Miss Frettlby, calmly, “it’s a pun, and especially a bad one.”
Mrs. Sampson was very much astonished at the early arrival of her lodger’s guests, and did not hesitate to express her astonishment.
“Bein’ taken by surprise,” she said, with an apologetic cackle, “it ain’t to be suppose as miraculs can be performed with regard to cookin’, the fire havin’ gone out, not bein’ kept alight on account of the ‘eat of the day, which was that ‘ot as never was, tho’, to be sure, bein’ a child in the early days, I remember it were that ‘ot as my sister’s aunt was in the ‘abit of roastin’ her jints in the sun.”
After telling this last romance, and leaving her visitors in doubt whether the joints referred to belonged to an animal or to her sister’s aunt or to herself, Mrs. Sampson crackled away downstairs to get things ready.
“What a curious thing that landlady of yours is, Brian,” said Madge, from the depths of a huge arm-chair. “I believe she’s a grasshopper from the Fitzroy Gardens.”
“Oh, no, she’s a woman,” said Mr. Frettlby, cynically. “You can tell that by the length of her tongue.”
“A popular error, papa,” retorted Madge, sharply. “I know plenty of men who talk far more than any woman.”
“I hope I’ll never meet them, then,” said Mr. Frettlby, “for if I did I should be inclined to agree with De Quincey on murder as a fine art.”
Brian winced at this, and looked apprehensively at Madge, and saw with relief that she was not paying attention to her father, but was listening intently.
“There she is,” as a faint rustle at the door announced the arrival of Mrs. Sampson and the tea-tray. “I wonder, Brian, you don’t think the house is on fire with that queer noise always going on—she wants oil!”
“Yes, St. Jacob’s oil,” laughed Brian, as Mrs. Sampson entered, and placed her burden on the table.
“Not ‘avin’ any cake,” said that lady, “thro’ not being forewarned as to the time of arrival—tho’ it’s not ofting I’m taken by surprise—except as to a ‘eadache, which, of course, is accidental to every pusson—I ain’t got nothin’ but bread and butter, the baker and grocer both bein’ all that could be desired, except in the way of worryin’ for their money, which they thinks as ‘ow I keeps the bank in the ‘ouse, like Allading’s cave, as I’ve ‘eard tell in the Arabian Nights, me ‘avin’ gained it as a prize for English in my early girl’ood, bein’ then considered a scholard an’ industrus.”
Mrs. Sampson’s shrill apologies for the absence of cake having been received, she hopped out of the room, and Madge made the tea. The service was a quaint Chinese one, which Brian had picked up in his wanderings. He used it only on special occasions. As he watched Madge he could not help thinking how pretty she looked, with her hands moving deftly among the cups and saucers, so bizarre-looking with their sprawling dragons of yellow and green. He half smiled to himself as he thought, “If they knew all, I wonder if they would sit with me so unconcernedly.”
Mr. Frettlby, too, as he looked at his daughter, thought of his dead wife and sighed.
“Well,” said Madge, as she handed them their tea, and helped herself to some thin bread and butter, “you two