Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/45

 Buns! The simple word started latent memories of his childhood. Jenny was only a child, after all. Buns! He had forgotten what they were like. And as they looked at the piles of variegated cakes in the window, he said to her, “Which are buns, Jenny? I should like to have one, too.”

“I am almost afraid of you,” she said. “You must despise me so. Are you so good that you deny yourself all the vanity and pleasure that most people love? It is wonderful not to know what buns are! The round, brown, shiny cakes, with little raisins in them, are buns.”

So he bought two beautiful buns, and they sat together in the shop, eating them. Jenny bit hers rather diffidently, but was reassured when he said that they must have buns very often in the cottage. Yes! he, the famous toper and gourmet of St. James’s, relished this homely fare, as it passed through the insensible lips of his mask to his palate. He seemed to rise, from the consumption of his bun, a better man.

But there was no time to lose now. It was already past two o’clock. So he got a chaise from the inn opposite the pastry-shop, and they were swiftly driven to Doctors’ Commons. There he purchased a special