Lavender's green;
When I am king, diddle-diddle,
You shall be queen."
It is certain he meant very seriously that if he ever came into his kingdom Godelinette should be queen. The song had been printed, but, so far as I knew, had never had much vogue; and it seemed an odd chance that this evening, in a French seaport town where I was passing a single night, I should stray by hazard into a sailors' pothouse and hear it again.
Edmund Pair lived in the Latin Quarter when I did, but he was no longer a mere student. He had published a good many songs; articles had been written about them in the newspapers; and at his rooms you would meet the men who had "arrived"—actors, painters, musicians, authors, and now and then a politician —who thus recognised him as more or less one of themselves. Everybody liked him; everybody said, "He is splendidly gifted; he will go far." A few of us already addressed him, half-playfully perhaps, as cher maître.
He was three or four years older than I—eight or nine and twenty to my twenty-five—and I was still in the schools; but for all that we were great chums. Quite apart from his special talent, he was a remarkable man—amusing in talk, good-looking, generous, affectionate. He had read; he had travelled; he had hob-and-nobbed with all sorts and conditions of people. He had wit, imagination, humour, and a voice that made whatever he said a cordial to the ear. For myself I admired him, enjoyed him, loved him, with equal fervour; he had all of my hero-worship and the lion's share of my friendship; perhaps I was vain as well as glad to be distinguished by his intimacy. We used to spend two orthree