Mrs. John began by hoping that the brown gentleman had been to church.

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” he replied, with gentle regret in his voice.

And in the course of the conversation he was frequently afraid.  Nevertheless his attitude was by no means a fearful attitude; on the contrary it was very confident.  He would grasp the edge of the table with his hands, and narrate at length, smiling amiably, and looking from side to side regularly like a public speaker.  He narrated in detail the difficulties which he had in obtaining the right sort of cutlets rightly cooked at his club, and added:  “But of course there’s only one club in London that would be satisfactory in all this—­shall I say?—­finesse, and I’m afraid I don’t belong to it.”

“What club’s that?” John Orgreave sent the inquiry down the table.

“The Orleans.”

“Oh yes, the Orleans!  I suppose that is the best.”

And everybody seemed glad and proud that everybody had known of the culinary supremacy of the Orleans.

“I’m afraid you’ll all think I’m horribly greedy,” said the brown gentleman apologetically.  And then at once, having noticed that Mr. Enwright was gazing up at the great sham oak rafters that were glued on to the white ceiling, he started upon this new architectural picturesqueness which was to London and the beginning of the twentieth century what the enamelled milking-stool had been to the provinces and the end of the nineteenth century—­namely, a reminder that even in an industrial age romance should still survive in the hearts of men.  The brown gentleman remarked that with due deference to ’you professional gentlemen,’ he was afraid he liked the sham rafters, because they reminded him of the good old times and all that sort of thing.

He was not only a conscientious conversationalist, but he originated talk in others, and listened to them with his best attention.  And he invariably stepped into gaps with praise-worthy tact and skill.  Thus the chat meandered easily from subject to subject—­the Automobile Club’s tour from London to Southsea, the latest hotel, Richter, the war (which the brown gentleman treated with tired respect, as some venerable survival that had forgotten to die), the abnormally early fogs, and the abnormally violent and destructive gales.  An argument arose as to whether these startling weather phenomena were or were not a hint to mankind from some undefined Higher Power that a new century had in truth begun and that mankind had better mind what it was about.  Mrs. John favoured the notion, and so did Miss Orgreave, whereas John Orgreave coarsely laughed at it.  The brown gentleman held the scales admirably; he was chivalrously sympathetic to the two ladies, and yet he respected John’s materialism.  He did, however, venture to point out the contradictions in the character of ‘our host,’ who was really very responsive to music and art, but who seemed curiously to ignore certain other influences—­etc. etc.