A servant announced “Monsieur Gribton,” and a little grizzled man hobbled in, leaning heavily on a stick.  He wore a short beard, and in his tanned face two clever grey eyes twinkled sedately.  He shook hands gravely when Lewis introduced George, but his eyes immediately returned to the former’s face.

“You look a fit pair,” he said.  “I am instructed to give you all the help in my power, but I should like to know your game.  It isn’t sport this time, is it, Haystoun?  Logan is still talking about his week with you.  Well, well, we can do things at our leisure.  I have letters to write, and then it will be dinner-time, when we can talk.  Come to the club at eight, ‘Cercle des Voyageurs,’ corner of Rue Neuve de St. Michel.  I expect you belong, Haystoun; and anyway I’ll be there.”

He bowed them out with his staccato apologies, and the two returned to their hotel to dress.  Two hours later they found Gribton warming his hands in the smoking-room of the Cercle, a fussy and garrulous gentleman, eager for his dinner.  He pointed out such people as he knew, and was consumed with curiosity about the others.  Lewis wandered about the room before he sat down, shaking hands with several and nodding to many.

“You seem to know the whole earth,” said Gribton.

“I suppose that a world of acquaintance is the only reward of slackness,” Lewis said, laughing.  “It’s a trick I have.  I never forget a face and I honestly like to see people again.”

George pulled his long moustache.  “It’s simply hideous the way one is forgotten.  It’s all right for the busy people, for they shift their sets with their fortune, but for drones like me it’s the saddest thing in life.  Before we came away, Lewie, I went up for a day to Oxford to see about some things, and stopped a night there.  I haven’t been down long, and yet I knew nobody at the club except the treasurer, and he had nothing to say to me except to ask after you.  I went to dinner with the dons at the high table, and I nearly perished of the blues.  Little Riddell chirped about my profession, and that bounder Jackson, who was of our year, pretended that he had been your bosom friend.  I got so bored that I left early and wandered back to the club.  Somebody was making a racket in our old rooms in the High, windows open, you know, and singing.  I stopped to look at them, and then they started, ’Willie brewed a peck o’ maut,’ and, ’pon my soul, I had to come away.  Couldn’t stand it.  It reminded me so badly of you and Arthur and old John Lambert, and all the honest men that used to be there.  It was infernally absurd that I should have got so sentimental, but that wasn’t the worst of it.  For I met Tony and he made me come round to a dinner, and there I found people I didn’t know from Adam drinking the old toasts we started.  Gad, they had them all.  ‘Las Palmas,’ ‘The Old Guard,’ ‘The Wandering Scot,’ and all the others.  It made me feel as low as an owl, and when I got back to the club and saw poor old John’s photograph on the wall, I tell you I went to bed in the most wretched melancholy.”