“As a rule,” said Burton, “I don’t think women recognize any difference in flavors.  I believe wild duck and hashed mutton would be quite the same to my wife if her eyes were blinded.  I should not mind this, if it were not that they are generally proud of the deficiency.  They think it grand.”

“Just as men think it grand not to know one tune from another,” said his wife.

When dinner was over, Burton got up from his seat.  “Harry,” said he, “do you like good wine?” Harry said that he did.  Whatever women may say about wild fowl, men never profess an indifference to good wine, although there is a theory about the world, quite as incorrect as it is general, that they have given up drinking it.  “Indeed I do,” said Harry.  “Then I’ll give you a bottle of port,” said Burton, and so saying he left the room.

“I’m very glad you have come to-day,” said Jones, with much gravity.  “He never gives me any of that when I’m alone with him; and he never, by any means, brings it out for company.”

“You don’t mean to accuse him of drinking it alone, Tom?” said his sister, laughing.

“I don’t know when he drinks it; I only know when he doesn’t.”

The wine was decanted with as much care as had been given to the concoction of the gravy, and the clearness of the dark liquid was scrutinized with an eye that was full of anxious care.  “Now, Cissy, what do you think of that?  She knows a glass of good wine when she gets it, as well as you do Harry, in spite of her contempt for the duck.”

As they sipped the old port, they sat round the dining-room fire, and Harry Clavering was forced to own to himself that he had never been more comfortable.

“Ah,” said Burton, stretching out his slippered feet, “why can’t it all be after-dinner, instead of that weary room at the Adelphi?”

“And all old port?” said Jones.

“Yes, and all old port.  You are not such an ass as to suppose that a man in suggesting to himself a continuance of pleasure suggests to himself also the evils which are supposed to accompany such pleasure.  If I took much of the stuff I should get cross and sick, and make a beast of myself but then what a pity it is that it should be so.”

“You wouldn’t like much of it, I think,” said his wife.

“That is it,” said he.  “We are driven to work because work never palls on us, whereas pleasure always does.  What a wonderful scheme it is when one looks at it all.  No man can follow, pleasure long continually.  When a man strives to do so, he turns his pleasure at once into business, and works at that.  Come, Harry, we musn’t have another bottle, as Jones would go to sleep among the type.”  Then they all went up stairs together.  Harry, before he went away, was taken again up into the nursery, and there kissed the two little girls in their cots.  When he was outside the nursery door, on the top of the stairs, Mrs. Burton took him by the hand.  “You’ll come to us often,” said she, “and make yourself at home here, will you not?” Harry could not but say that he would.  Indeed he did so without hesitation, almost with eagerness, for he had liked her and had liked her house.  “We think of you, you know,” she continued, “quite as one of ourselves.  How could it be otherwise when Flo is the dearest to us of all beyond our own?”