MISS CUBBIDGE AND THE DRAGON OF ROMANCE


This tale is told in the balconies of Belgrave Square and among the
towers of Pont Street; men sing it at evening in the Brompton Road.

Little upon her eighteenth birthday thought Miss Cubbidge, of Number
12A Prince of Wales' Square, that before another year had gone its way
she would lose the sight of that unshapely oblong that was so long her
home. And, had you told her further that within that year all trace of
that so-called square, and of the day when her father was elected by a
thumping majority to share in the guidance of the destinies of the
empire, should utterly fade from her memory, she would merely have
said in that affected voice of hers, "Go to!"

There was nothing about it in the daily Press, the policy of her
father's party had no provision for it, there was no hint of it in
conversation at evening parties to which Miss Cubbidge went: there was
nothing to warn her at all that a loathsome dragon with golden scales
that rattled as he went would have come up clean out of the prime of
romance and gone by night (so far as we know) through Hammersmith, and
come to Ardle Mansion, and then had turned to his left, which of
course brought him to Miss Cubbidge's father's house.

There sat Miss Cubbidge at evening on her balcony quite alone, waiting
for her father to be made a baronet. She was wearing walking-boots and
a hat and a lownecked evening dress; for a painter was but just now
painting her portrait and neither she nor the painter saw anything odd