acknowledgment of my right to be heard of from her--but, of course, he
went on agreeably, he had heard of me in any case; he supposed everybody
had. My celebrity was so immature that I should not have recognized this
allusion to it if Reggie had not gone on even more genially. He said he
liked awfully the things I did in the _Morning Standard_. Most especially
and enthusiastically he liked my account of the big boxing match at
Olympia. You could see it was written by a chap who knew what he was
talking about.

I had to confess that Tasker Jevons was the chap who wrote it. Reggie,
quite prettily abashed, tried to recover himself and plunged further. He
brought up from his memory one thing after another. And all his
reminiscences were of Jevons. He had mixed us up hopelessly, as people
did in those days. They knew I was associated with the _Morning
Standard_, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recall
anything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. Poor
Reggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourth
desperate effort he gave it up. His memory, he said, was rotten.

I said, on the contrary, his memory for Jevons was perfect, and he looked
at me charmingly and laughed.

While he was laughing Viola came in. She had Jevons with her.

It was evident that neither of them was prepared for Reggie Thesiger.
They had let themselves in with a latch-key and come straight upstairs
without encountering Mrs. Pavitt.

At the sight of her brother Viola betrayed a feeling I should not have
believed possible to her. For the first and I may say the last, time in