has nothing to do with this story. She was now engaged to be married to
a poorer and busier man, but it was to Jack Burgess that she appealed.

"Of course I know," said he when he had responded to her message and she
had anchored him with a tea-cup and disarmed him with a smile, "of
course I know what you want to say to me. Every girl who has refused me
has said it sooner or later. You are saying it later--much later--than
they generally do, but it always comes. 'You have found a wife for me.'"

"I have done much better than that," she answered, "I have found work
for you." And she sketched the distress of the Hyacinths in Denmark and
urged him to go to their assistance.

"But, my dear Margaret," he remonstrated, "What can I do? You have
always known that 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' and
yet you have let these poor innocents stir it up. I have often thought
that poor Shakespeare added that line after the first performance. I
intend to write that hint to Furniss one of these days."

"You will write it," said Margaret Masters, "with more conviction after
you have seen _my_ Denmark."

"Very well," said he, "I'll visit Elsinore to-night, but I insist upon a
return ticket."

"You will be begging for a season ticket," she laughed. "They have
reduced me to such a condition that I don't know whether they are
amusing me or breaking my heart. Tell me, come, which is it? Did you
ever hear blank verse recited with tense and reverent earnestness and a
Bowery accent?"