“Kipper” never touched a penny of her money, but if he had been her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn’t have worked harder, and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn’t want to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance would have been to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper.  It was Caroline Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton, Caroline Trevelyan and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and the Old Apple-woman.  When it wasn’t Caroline Trevelyan herself it would be Caroline Trevelyan’s dog as would be doing something out of the common, getting himself lost or summoned or drowned—­it didn’t matter much what.

I moved from Oxford Street to the new “Horseshoe” that year—­it had just been rebuilt—­and there I saw a good deal of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular.  Young “Kipper”—­or the “Captain” as everybody called him—­gave out that he was her half-brother.

“I’ad to be some sort of a relation, you see,” he explained to me.  “I’d a’ been ’er brother out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness wasn’t strong enough.  Our styles o’ beauty ain’t similar.”  They certainly wasn’t.

“Why don’t you marry her?” I says, “and have done with it?”

He looked thoughtful at that.  “I did think of it,” he says, “and I know, jolly well, that if I ’ad suggested it ’fore she’d found herself, she’d have agreed, but it don’t seem quite fair now.”

“How d’ye mean fair?” I says.

“Well, not fair to ’er,” he says.  “I’ve got on all right, in a small way; but she—­well, she can just ’ave ’er pick of the nobs.  There’s one on ’em as I’ve made inquiries about.  ’E’ll be a dook, if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow ’e’ll be a markis, and ’e means the straight thing—­no errer.  It ain’t fair for me to stand in ’er way.”

“Well,” I says, “you know your own business, but it seems to me she wouldn’t have much way to stand in if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he says.  “I’m fond enough of the gell, but I shan’t clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain’t ever Mrs. Capt’n Kit.  Business is business; and I ain’t going to queer ’er pitch for ’er.”

I’ve often wondered what she’d a’ said, if he’d up and put the case to her plain, for she was a good sort; but, naturally enough, her head was a bit swelled, and she’d read so much rot about herself in the papers that she’d got at last to half believe some of it.  The thought of her connection with the well-known judge seemed to hamper her at times, and she wasn’t quite so chummy with “Kipper” as used to be the case in the Mile-End Road days, and he wasn’t the sort as is slow to see a thing.

One day when he was having lunch by himself, and I was waiting on him, he says, raising his glass to his lips, “Well, ’Enery, here’s luck to yer!  I won’t be seeing you agen for some time.”