The parlour of Frog Farm had not the peculiar mustiness which greeted Jinny’s nostrils when last she peeped into it that tragic morning of Maria’s illness, but there was by way of compensation a reek of stale tobacco and the odours of the breakfast bacon and mushrooms, while in lieu of the sacrosanct tidiness there was a pervasion of papers, with a whole mass of scripts sliding steadily from the slippery sofa. The brown-lozenged text on the wall: “When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?” seemed to shriek for Caleb’s answer: “Friend Flippance.” Other documents bulged and bristled from both pockets of the dressing-gown as from greasy paniers.

“Bless you, Jinny,” Tony gurgled from his breakfast-cup. He eyed her rapturously. “What a pretty pair you’ll make at the wedding!”

“It’s no use, Mr. Flippance,” said Martha, beaming, “I’ve told you before I won’t go into a church.”

Mr. Flippance, who had been mentally coupling his bride and Jinny, replied with but the briefest muscular quiver, that the only thing that reconciled him to Martha’s absence was that she was incapacitated by matrimony from the rÔle of bridesmaid. This morning he would not trouble her to wait. “You can ‘withdraw’ from me,” he said jocosely.

Martha was jarred by this profane use of the sacred vocabulary, and moreover felt it almost as improper to leave Jinny alone in her house, even with a budding bridegroom. “Jinny’s got no secrets from me,” she said tartly; and Mr. Flippance, divining his error, remarked blandly, “Nor have I.” And as Martha started to dust the mantelpiece ornaments and to discover cigar-ash in her china shoes, he drew Jinny’s attention to the “beautiful” silk sampler that hung over them. “And all worked with Mrs. Flynt’s own hand! What a wonderful lion—and as for the unicorn, she’s got it to the life!”

“Oh, it’s only what I did when a girl,” said Martha, blushing modestly. “Only I didn’t like to hang it up then, because I’d left no room for the foreign trees like my sisters put in!”

“Well, but you’ve got in the alphabet, big and little, and all the figures! Wonderful!”

“That’s where Willie learnt his A B C from,” said Martha, radiant.

“Ah, that gay deceiver!” sighed Mr. Flippance. “He told me he was a Yankee, but now I find he’s only a yumorist. Still he’s a chap any woman can be proud of—what do you say, Jinny?”

Jinny, who had seated herself on the sofa, carefully steadied the slipping manuscripts as she replied with a forced lightness:

“I say, if you want a best man, you can’t find a better.”

“Ah, that’s the trouble. He won’t take part in a Church ceremony neither, he says he’s got to consider the old folks—at the chapel,” he added promptly. “But at any rate we shall have the best bridesmaid.”

“You don’t mean me?” said Jinny, colouring under his admiring gaze. “Because it’s impossible. I haven’t the time—or the money.”

“Is it the dress you’re thinking of? Surely the Theatre Royal, Chipstone, can run to that?” And pulling a protrusive scroll from a pocket of his dressing-gown, he unfurled it beatifically, exposing a poster with the coupled names of Anthony Flippance and Cleopatra Jones in giant letters.

“Anthony and Cleopatra!” he breathed in a ravishment. “The moment she told me her second name was Cleopatra I knew it was useless fighting against the fates.”

“But have you bought our chapel then?” Jinny inquired.

“Bought your chapel?” Mr. Flippance was mystified. “Why on earth should I buy your chapel?”

“You—you might have turned it into a theatre!” she stammered apologetically.

He waved the suggestion away with a jewelled hand. “Only a new Temple of Thespis could live up to Anthony and Cleopatra. We are building!”

“Where?” Now it was Jinny that was mystified—she had seen no such enterprise afoot.

“Here!” He tapped the other pocket of his dressing-gown. “Plans!” He rolled up his poster reluctantly. “Cleopatra wanted to see it in print. Didn’t I say what a work getting married was? But now that the bridesmaid’s settled——!”

“But she’s not!” said Jinny, more alarmed than when he was trying to cast her for the bride, perhaps because the danger of being sucked in was greater.

“Oh, Jinny!” He looked at her with large reproachful eyes and mechanically threw bacon to Nip, who had at last sniffed his way in, and who, fortunately for Martha’s composure, caught it ere it reached her carpet. “You see she wants to have the thing all regular and respectable, and all her family are in Wales. She hasn’t got a parent handy to give her away. And having led a wandering life, she hadn’t even a parish to marry in. I never thought you’d desert an old pal.”

“But I’m no pal of hers—I don’t even know her.”

“Oh, Jinny!” And just arresting a paper-slide, he extricated a photograph from the imperilled mass. “The new Scott Archer process,” he declared proudly. “Knocks your daguerreotypes into the middle of last week. Good gag that, eh?”

But it was Jinny who seemed knocked into that period; and not only by this new triumph of the camera. For in this wonderful breathing image she recognized—in all save size, for this seemed a Cleopatra swelling to regal stature—the beauteous human doll she had last seen walking down the steps of a toy house, conning a part.

“But she’s married!” she gasped.

“Not yet. Would to heaven it were all over!” said Mr. Flippance airily, but his great brow grew black for an instant ere he turned it sunnily on Martha. “Oh, ma, could I have more of these marvellous mushrooms?”

“I’ll see, you greedy boy,” she smiled, retreating.

“Well, who could help saying encore to such items?” He turned reproachfully on Jinny. “You nearly shocked the old lady.”

“But didn’t you—didn’t you call her the Duchess?” Jinny stammered. “Oh, but perhaps it is Mrs. Duke’s sister—she looks taller.”

“That’s because she’s got no legs,” he explained paradoxically. “But it’s all right—The Loveliest Leading Lady in London.” (Jinny heard the capital letters distinctly.)

He went on to explain that London didn’t know this yet, and that some time must elapse before Cleopatra would be in a position to demonstrate it on the spot, owing to local jealousies. But Jinny came back remorselessly to her point.

“But surely she was married to Mr. Duke!”

“Hush! Appearances are deceptive. They were just close friends.”

“You couldn’t well be closer—in that doll’s house,” said Jinny scornfully. And her own words reminded her how he had denounced the Duchess as a “squeaking doll” whose “golden” hair was spurious.

“Now you shock me, Jinny,” said Mr. Flippance severely. “Pure as the driven snow is my Cleo, stainless as the Lady Agnes, shut up in that great oak chest on her wedding morn, sweet as her namesake, Bianca, in The Taming of the Shrew.”

“Why does she tame shrews?” asked Jinny, puzzled.

“That’s a play by Shakespeare”—the name not occurring in the Spelling-Book, left Jinny unimpressed. “A shrew is a vixen.”

This natural history left Jinny still less impressed. “That’s nonsense,” she said. “A shrew is tiny and lovely to look at, with darling rounded ears. I buried one the other day, and its eye was as bright as life.”

“It’s only a way of speaking,” he explained, “as you call a woman a cat. Katharina’s the polecat of the play that her husband has to tame with a whip, but Bianca is a dove, gentle and spotless.”

“Doves are not so gentle,” said Jinny. “They peck each other dreadfully. I like vixens better, at least they seem fonder of their family when you peep down their earths.”

Mr. Flippance, who had never in his life seen either a shrew or a vixen or a polecat or observed the habits of doves, was taken aback. He had even a vague sense of blasphemy, some ancient religious images whirring confusedly in his brain. “Understand this, Jinny,” he said sharply, abandoning the shifting sands of metaphor, “Cleo gave Mr. Duke her companionship and her artistic co-operation, but as for marrying him—bring me that Book!”

He indicated the precious volume which Mrs. Flynt had left in the parlour for his study of the text-evidence of the Christadelphian teaching. But Jinny took his Bible oath for granted. Sincerity and righteous indignation radiated from every round inch of his face, and Jinny, despite her farmyard experience, was too nebulous in her ideas of human matings not to be shaken. In truth he had been vastly relieved by the discovery that the couple had pretermitted the ceremony and that he was saved the tedium and expense of a divorce suit, though he wondered why Mr. Duke with his meticulous book-keeping and contracts should be so loose where women were concerned, while he, so averse from parchments and figures, had a proper respect for the marriage-tie. Human nature was devilishly deep, he thought: no wonder a man got drowned if he tried to fathom himself.

But Jinny, though she now believed she had misunderstood the ducal mÉnage, was not without an instinctive distrust. “She didn’t want to live in the caravan,” she protested.

“No,” he agreed, misapprehending the local idiom. “It was that pig-headed wire-puller who wanted it. Duke’s the villain of the piece, abusing my darling’s innocence and exploiting her artistic aspirations. He got round the poor girl, knowing her aunt had left her all her money. Cleo, my dear Jinny, is the niece of the famous Cleopatra, the Cairo Contortionist, after whom she was christened, and whose death a year or so ago eclipsed the gaiety of Astley’s and Mr. Batty’s new Hippodrome.”

“Was she so beautiful?” asked Jinny, somewhat awed.

“I was in love with her myself in my youth,” Mr. Flippance replied simply. “But though you could gossip with her round the coke-brazier at the back of the ring, she always made you feel that no man was worthy to chalk the soles of her tight-rope shoes. And her niece, as you have doubtless perceived, has the same grand manner.”

“Then why did she keep company with Mr. Duke?”

Jinny returned to the sore spot, Mr. Flippance felt, like a buzzing bluebottle.

“If you don’t believe me,” he cried, “show me the little Dukes and Duchesses. Where are they? Produce ’em.”

He looked at her fiercely—as demanding a rain of coroneted cherubs from the air.

The bold stroke put the climax to Jinny’s obfuscation. Marriage without children was practically unknown on her round, though the children often died. “Don’t you see he wanted to compromise her?” pursued Tony triumphantly, after giving the cherubs a reasonable time to materialize. “He thought she’d never dare break away with her money, and that he could spend her last farthing on boosting himself into the legitimate. He’s all right with the marionettes—a dapster as you say here,” Mr. Flippance admitted magnanimously. “But as an actor he could no more expect to please my public than to keep Cleo hidden in a bushel. He might throw up the sponge and go back to his fantoccini—but what career was that for Cleo? She broke with him on the nail—the partnership, I mean. And I ask you, ma,” he wound up, with an appreciative sniff as Martha re-entered, not only with mushrooms but freshly fried bacon, “what woman of spirit could do otherwise?”

Mrs. Flynt beamed assent, and her apparent acquaintance with the facts contributed to lull Jinny’s uneasiness. Surely the pious Martha would not connive at scandalous proceedings. Relieved, she sat silent; wondering—while Mr. Flippance did jovial justice to the encore dish—what the Duchess would think if she knew that she, Jinny, could have anticipated her in the rÔle of the second Mrs. Flippance. And what would Polly have thought of her as a stepmother, she wondered still more whimsically. Perhaps between them they could have made a man of him. She had never seen his daughter over her cigar and milk or her sense of Polly as a pillar of respectability might have been shattered.

“And how is Miss Flippance?” she said.

His face changed suddenly—rain-clouds overgloomed the sun. His fork fell from his fingers. “You don’t know what daughters are,” he blubbered. “She’s left me!”

“Left you?”

“Ask ma,” he half sobbed. It was infinitely pathetic.

“Don’t let it get cold again,” Martha coaxed.

“I can’t eat.” He lit a cheroot abstractedly, and the old woman and the young girl followed his silent puffings with a yearning sympathy, while Nip begged, unheeded.

“Mad on marionettes is Polly,” he said at last. “The moment I got rid of ’em, she packed up my things and was off.”

“Stole your things?” cried the startled Jinny.

“No—no. She knew I should be moving on for the banns—Cleo likes a quiet place—so she left me tidy. That was her sole conception of her duty to her legal pa. But she had always looked upon me as a thing to be tidied—not a soul to be loved and cherished.” He wiped an eye with the sleeve of his dressing-gown and asked brokenly for his brandy. Martha hurried to his bedroom.

“But perhaps your daughter’ll come back,” Jinny suggested soothingly.

“God forbid!” he cried. “I mean they’d be at it hammer and tongs. Perhaps Providence does all things for the best.”

“But where has she gone?” Jinny’s sympathy was now passing to Polly, as she began to grasp the true complexity of her exodus.

“To her grandmother in Cork, I expect.” He blew a placid puff. “Did I never tell you my pa’s real wife—the one he didn’t live with, I mean—was originally the widow of a well-to-do cheesemonger? Polly always looked up her nominal granny when we played Ireland. She likes respectable people.”

“Is that why she won’t come to the wedding?” Jinny inquired cruelly, for Polly’s refusal to countenance it again stirred up her doubts.

Mr. Flippance was angered afresh. “I tell you, my Cleopatra can hold up her head with the whitest cheesemonger’s widow in the land. But it’s hard,” he said, reverting to pathos and flicking his cigar-ash mournfully into the just-dusted shoe, “to be left without a daughter at such a crisis. Think how she would have stage-managed everything—even bought the ring.” The tragedy of his situation mastered him. “Forgive my emotion—I was always one to wear my heart on my sleeve.” He wiped his eyes on it again. “Nobody will ever pack like Polly. Ah, thank you, ma,” he said, as Martha reappeared with the brandy bottle. “Have you half a crown?” he added, pouring himself out a careless quota. “You see,” he explained, setting down his glass dolefully, and tendering Martha’s half-crown to the astonished Jinny, “though old pals desert one at the altar, Tony Flip doesn’t forget his obligations.”

“But what’s it for?” Jinny took the coin tentatively.

“You lent me it when that wicked Duke demanded money on the contract.”

“Oh, thank you!” Jinny was touched—a half-crown seemed as large as her cart-wheel nowadays. Half remorsefully she suggested that a far better bridesmaid would be the girl at Foxearth Farm.

He shook his head. “I’ve been into that. But there are—objections. It doesn’t do, you see, for the super to be taller than the leading lady. Now you being shorter——”

“But if Miss Jones were to wear very low heels——”

“But that would only make Miss Purley look still taller,” he said, puzzled.

“I mean Miss Purley to wear the low heels—she is a Miss Jones, too.”

“What?”

“Blanche Jones is her name—she’s only old Purley’s stepdaughter.”

He started up. “Then Mrs. Purley was formerly Mrs. Jones?”

“Yes.”

“Hurrah!” He seized the surprised Martha by the waist and began waltzing with her, while Nip barked with excitement.

“Quiet, Nip! What’s the matter?” cried Jinny, smiling.

“A relation at last! Don’t you see that Mrs. Jones can give the bride away?”

“But she’s not really a relation.”

“All these Joneses are one large family,” he said airily.

“But you don’t need a relation,” Martha pointed out. “A friend will do.”

“Really? I must study the stage-directions—I mean,” he corrected himself hastily, “yours may be different from the Church of England.”

“But I know all the same, for we weren’t allowed to marry in our own chapels, leastways not till after Willie was born.”

“Well, anyhow, I’m sure Cleopatra would prefer a relation. Mrs. Jones is a Churchwoman, I hope. It’s necessary, ma, you know,” he apologized.

“Yes—her husband’s a churchwarden,” said Jinny.

“A churchwarden! Hurrah! Better and better. Then he shall give Cleo away.” He bumped the beaming, breathless Martha round again.

“But he isn’t even called Jones,” Jinny reminded him.

“A husband takes over his wife’s Jonesiness. Bless you, Jinny!” He seized her hand and dragged her likewise into the circular movement. “Now we go round the mulberry-bush, the mulberry-bush, the mulberry-bush——”

Caleb, coming past the door at this instant, stood spellbound. Had Mr. Flippance been really converted, and was it the joy of the New Jerusalem? Or had Martha now “moved on,” and was this the new dancing sect of which one heard rumours?

Martha’s caperings ceased at sight of him. “It’s the wedding,” she said somewhat shamefacedly. “I’m just going to pickle your walnuts, dear heart,” she added sweetly. “And Jinny must be getting to her work, too.”

At which delicate hint, Jinny, faintly flushing, rose to take her leave, and Nip, who had been whining his impatience, was already gambolling hysterically without, before she remembered she had forgotten the very purpose of her visit.

“Oh, by the way, Mr. Flippance,” she said, as she followed Nip, “I suppose the wedding-gown is ordered.”

“Wedding-gown!” he repeated. “You don’t think Cleo has any need of wedding-gowns! Why the Lady Agnes dress—Act One—is the very prop. for the occasion, and brand new, for she had just got Duke to put on The Mistletoe Bough. Otherwise I should have been asking you for the address of that wonderful French friend of yours—the bearded lady, you know. But if you won’t be a bridesmaid, you’ve got to come to the show—yes, and the wedding breakfast too—I won’t take any refusal. It’ll be at Foxearth Farm, and I’m ordering oceans of sweet champagne. Well, thank you a million times for finding Cleo a father. Good-bye, dear. God bless you!” He had shuffled without and now kissed his hand to the moving cart.

“What about a new wedding-gown for you?” Jinny called back. “A dressing-gown, I mean.”

“Yumorist!” came his chuckled answer.