“Have you seen my malacca cane, Pat,” said Dearman.  “I want it.”

“But I really have!” said Augustus, springing up.

“Of course you have,” replied Dearman.  “What do you mean?”

* * * * *

“John dear,” remarked Mrs. Dearman one day, “I wish you could give Gussie a hint not to come quite so often.  I have given him some very broad ones during the last few months, but he won’t take them.  He would from you, I expect.”

“Tired of the little bounder, Pat?”

“Oh, sick and tired.  He bores me to tears.  I wish he were in Government Service and could be transferred.  A Government man’s always transferred as soon as he has settled to his job.  I can’t forbid him the house, very well, but I wish he’d realize how weary I am of his poses and new socks.”

* * * * *

Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble sat in the long cane chair in his sitting-room, a look of rebellious discontent upon his face.  What could he do?  Better chuck his job and clear out!  The strain was getting awful.  What a relentless, watchful brute Dearman was!  To him entered that gentleman after gently tapping at the chamber door.

“Gussie,” said he, “I have come to say that I think you weary me.  I don’t want you to come and play with me any more. But be a nice good boy and do me credit.  I have brought you this malacca as a present and a memento.  I have another, Gussie, and am going to watch you, so be a real credit to me.”

And Gussie was.

So once again a good woman redeemed a bad man—­but a trifle indirectly perhaps.

Then came General Miltiades Murger and Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison to be saved.

During intervals in the salvation process, Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison vainly endeavoured to induce Mr. Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble to lend his countenance, as well as the rest of his person, to the European Company of the Gungapur Fusilier Volunteer Corps which it was the earnest ambition of Ross-Ellison to raise and train and consolidate into a real and genuine defence organization, with a maxim-gun, a motor-cycle and car section, and a mounted troop, and with, above all, a living and sturdy esprit-de-corps.  Such a Company appeared to him to be the one and only hope of regeneration for the ludicrous corps which Colonel Dearman commanded, and to change the metaphor, the sole possible means of leavening the lump by its example of high standards and high achievement.

To Augustus, however, as to many other Englishmen, the idea was merely ridiculous and its parent simply absurd.

The day dawned when Augustus, like the said many other Englishmen, changed his mind.  In his, and their defence, it may be urged that they knew nothing of the activities of a very retiring but persevering gentleman, known to his familiars as Ilderim the Weeper, and that they had grown up in the belief that all England’s fighting and defence can be done by a few underpaid, unconsidered, and very vulgar hirelings.