“Right; I got it in rather cleverly.  I was saying that it must be rather nice to want a thing so much that you’ll go through a lot to get it.  Most fellows aren’t like that.”

“A good many fellows are jelly-fish,” observed Michael.

“I suppose so.  I’m one, you know.  I drift and float.  But I don’t think I sting.  What are you doing to-night, by the way?”

“Playing the piano, I hope.  Why?”

“Only that two fellows are dining with me, and I thought perhaps you would come.  Aunt Barbara sent me the ticket for a box at the Gaiety, too, and we might look in there.  Then there’s a dance somewhere.”

“Thanks very much, but I think I won’t,” said Michael.  “I’m rather looking forward to an evening alone.”

“And that’s an odd thing to look forward to,” remarked Francis.

“Not when you want to play the piano.  I shall have a chop here at eight, and probably thump away till midnight.”

Francis looked round for his hat and stick.

“I must go,” he said.  “I ought to have gone long ago, but I didn’t want to.  The malady came in again.  Most of the world have got it, you know, Michael.”

Michael rose and stood by his tall cousin.

“I think we English have got it,” he said.  “At least, the English you and I know have got it.  But I don’t believe the Germans, for instance, have.  They’re in deadly earnest about all sorts of things—­music among them, which is the point that concerns me.  The music of the world is German, you know!”

Francis demurred to this.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said.  “This thing at the Gaiety is ripping, I believe.  Do come and see.”

Michael resisted this chance of revising his opinion about the German origin of music, and Francis drifted out into Piccadilly.  It was already getting on for seven o’clock, and the roadway and pavements were full of people who seemed rather to contradict Michael’s theory that the nation generally suffered from the malady of not wanting, so eagerly and numerously were they on the quest for amusement.  Already the street was a mass of taxicabs and private motors containing, each one of them, men and women in evening dress, hurrying out to dine before the theatre or the opera.  Bright, eager faces peered out, with sheen of silk and glitter of gems; they all seemed alert and prosperous and keen for the daily hours of evening entertainment.  A crowd similar in spirit pervaded the pavements, white-shirted men with coat on arm stepped in and out of swinging club doors and the example set by the leisured class seemed copiously copied by those whom desks and shops had made prisoners all day.  The air of the whole town, swarming with the nation that is supposed to make so grave an affair of its amusements, was indescribably gay and lighthearted; the whole city seemed set on enjoying itself.  The buses that boomed along were packed inside and out, and each was placarded with advertisement of