"Fifty of the best," said I, "and I'll wait for them here."
* * * * *
Well, I must say it was a tidy good notion, first for the pair of them
to work a trick like that on the public just for the sake of letting
all the world know that Mabel Bellamy was to disappear from a basket at
the Casino Theatre; and secondly, dropping on the _Daily Herald_ for
five hundred of the best--and getting it, too, before the story got
wind.
You see, the _Herald_ lost no money, for they had a fine scoop all to
their little selves, while the other papers gnashed their teeth and
looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled
version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a
doting father who never consented to it--and such a hash-up and
hocus-pocus as would have made a pig laugh.
Whether, however, the public really took it all, or whether it resented
the manner of the play, is not for me to say.
Sentiment is, after all, a very fine thing, as I told Betsy Chambers
the night I gave her the anchor brooch and asked her to wear it for
auld lang syne, to say nothing of the good time we had when I took her
to Maidenhead in old Moss's car and pretended I was broken down at
Reading with a dot-and-go-one accumulator. Of course, Moss weighed in
with an interview. I wonder the sight of his ugly old mug didn't
shrivel the paper it was printed on.
Anyway me and Betsy--but that's another story, and so, perhaps, I had
better conclude.