"Yes."

"Come back! Do come back!"

Paul came back and followed her into the parlour.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He graciously forgave her, having already arrived at the mature
conclusion that females were unaccountable folk whose excursions
into unreason should be regarded by man with pitying indulgence.
And, in spite of the seriousness with which he took himself, he was
a sunny-tempered youth.

Barney Bill, putting into the Port of London, so to speak, in order
to take in cargo, also visited the theatre towards the end of the
run of the piece. He waited, by arrangement, for Paul outside the
stage door, and Paul, coming out, linked arms and took him to a
blazing bar in Piccadilly Circus and ministered to his thirst, with
a princely air.

"It seems rum," said Bill, wiping his lips with the back of his
hand, after a mighty pull at the pint tankard--"it seems rum that
you should be standing me drinks at a swell place like this. It
seems only yesterday that you was a two-penn'orth of nothing jogging
along o' me in the old 'bus."

"I've moved a bit since then, haven't I?" said Paul.

"You have, sonny," said Barney Bill. "But"-he sighed and looked