“You’ll be saying you don’t know the Old Bailey next.”

“I don’t.  But I know a lot of people who should.”

“Don’t send ’em to ‘Poulter’s,’” said Miss Nippett.  “There’s enough already who’re be’ind with their accounts.”

A few minutes later, Mr Poulter entered the room, wearing evening dress, dancing pumps, and a tawdry-looking insignia in his coat.

“That’s the ‘B.A.T.D.,’ Grand Council Badge,” Miss Nippett informed Mavis.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Mavis, who felt that her hypocrisy was justified by the pleasure it gave kindly Mr Poulter.

“Say we enjoy a whiff of fresh air before commencing our labours,” suggested Mr Poulter.

Upon Mavis and Miss Nippett rising as if to fall in with his suggestion, Mr Poulter went before them, up the stairs, past the “Ladies’ Cloak Room,” along the passage to the front door.

As Miss Nippett and Mavis followed the dancing-master, the former said, referring to Mr Poulter: 

“’E once took the ’Olborn Town ’all for an ‘All Night,’ didn’t you, Mr Poulter?”

“The night the ‘Clacton Schottische’ was danced for the first time,” replied Poulter.

“And what do you think the refreshments was contracted at a ’ead?” asked Miss Nippett.

“Give it up,” replied Mavis.

“Why, no less than three shillin’s, wasn’t it, Mr Poulter?”

“True enough,” replied Mr Poulter.  “But I must admit the attendants did look ‘old-fashioned’ at you, if you ’ad two glasses of claret-cup running.”

By this time, they were outside of the front door, where Mr Poulter paused, as if designing not to go any further into the night air, which, for the time of year, was close and warm.

“I don’t want to give the ‘Bush’ the chance of saying Poulter never shows himself outside the walls of the academy,” remarked the dancing-master complacently.

“There’s so much jealousy of fame in the ‘Bush,’” added Miss Nippett.

As they stood on the steps, Mavis could not help noticing that whereas Miss Nippett had only eyes for Mr Poulter, the latter’s attention was fixed on the plaster figure of “Turpsichor” to the exclusion of everything else.

“A classic figure”—­(he pronounced it “clarsic")—­“gives a distinction to an academy, which is denied to mongrel and mushroom imitations,” he presently remarked.

“Quite so,” assented Mavis.

“She has been with ‘Poulter’s’ fifteen years.”

“Almost as long as I have,” put in Miss Nippett.

“The figure?” asked Mavis.

“The statue ‘Turpsichor,’” corrected Mr Poulter.