ROBERT.
* * * * *
SPECIMENS FROM MR. PUNCH'S SCAMP-ALBUM.
NO. IV.--THE HUSBAND'S OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW.
We will suppose that you are a young wife, and that your husband is
absent in the City during the greater part of the day. One afternoon a
card is brought in bearing the inscription:--
CAPTAIN CAULKER.
_United Service Club. The Hermitage, Coventry_.
Which document is followed closely by a tall, well-groomed, rather
portly and florid stranger, with a military moustache, who greets
you with the utmost cordiality. "I happened to find myself in
this neighbourhood," he says, "and I could not--I really could
_not_--resist this opportunity. My name, I venture to think, is a
sufficient introduction?"
It is nothing of the sort--but you are too shy and too polite to admit
it, so you merely murmur some incoherency. He detects you at once.
"Ah!" he cries, in good-tempered reproach; "I see, I've been too
sanguine. Now confess, my dear lady, you haven't a _notion_ who I am!"
Thus brought to bay, you own that you have no clue to your visitor's
identity--as yet. "Well--well," he says, tolerantly, "Time is a
terrible sponge--though I had hoped that, even after all these years,
your dear husband might have occasionally mentioned the name of his
old school-chum! I've never forgotten _him_--no, all through the years
I've been in India I've never forgotten dear old WALTER!"
"But my husband's name is _WILLIAM_!" you say here.
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