"You mean that Judith? Yes, she's a good diversion." Edward gave a
two-edged response. "What train did you come up by last night?"

"The last from Wrexby. That reminds me: I saw a young Judith just as I
got out. She wanted a cab. I called it for her. She belongs to old
Hackbut of the Bank--the old porter, you know. If it wasn't that there's
always something about dark women which makes me think they're going to
have a moustache, I should take to that girl's face."

Edward launched forth an invective against fair women.

"What have they done to you-what have they done?" said Algernon.

"My good fellow, they're nothing but colour. They've no conscience. If
they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next. They can't
help doing it. You don't ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with
anything but the wind, do you? It's an ass that trusts a fair woman at
all, or has anything to do with the confounded set. Cleopatra was fair;
so was Delilah; so is the Devil's wife. Reach me that book of Reports."

"By jingo!" cried Algernon, "my stomach reports that if provision doesn't
soon approach----why don't you keep a French cook here, Ned? Let's give
up the women, and take to a French cook."

Edward yawned horribly. "All in good time. It's what we come to. It's
philosophy--your French cook! I wish I had it, or him. I'm afraid a
fellow can't anticipate his years--not so lucky!"

"By Jove! we shall have to be philosophers before we breakfast!" Algernon
exclaimed. "It's nine. I've to be tied to the stake at ten, chained and