“The chops are coming,” said Edward, who had thrown on a boating-coat and plunged into a book, and spoke echoing.

“Here’s little Peggy Lovell.”  Algernon faced this portrait.  “It don’t do her justice.  She’s got more life, more change in her, more fire.  She’s starting for town, I hear.”

“She is starting for town,” said Edward.

“How do you know that?” Algernon swung about to ask.

Edward looked round to him.  “By the fact of your not having fished for a holiday this week.  How did you leave her yesterday, Algy?  Quite well, I hope.”

The ingenuous face of the young gentleman crimsoned.

“Oh, she was well,” he said.  “Ha!  I see there can be some attraction in your dark women.”

“You mean that Judith?  Yes, she’s a good diversion.”  Edward gave a two-edged response.  “What train did you come up by last night?”

“The last from Wrexby.  That reminds me:  I saw a young Judith just as I got out.  She wanted a cab.  I called it for her.  She belongs to old Hackbut of the Bank—­the old porter, you know.  If it wasn’t that there’s always something about dark women which makes me think they’re going to have a moustache, I should take to that girl’s face.”

Edward launched forth an invective against fair women.

“What have they done to you-what have they done?” said Algernon.

“My good fellow, they’re nothing but colour.  They’ve no conscience.  If they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next.  They can’t help doing it.  You don’t ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with anything but the wind, do you?  It’s an ass that trusts a fair woman at all, or has anything to do with the confounded set.  Cleopatra was fair; so was Delilah; so is the Devil’s wife.  Reach me that book of Reports.”

“By jingo!” cried Algernon, “my stomach reports that if provision doesn’t soon approach——­why don’t you keep a French cook here, Ned?  Let’s give up the women, and take to a French cook.”

Edward yawned horribly.  “All in good time.  It’s what we come to.  It’s philosophy—­your French cook!  I wish I had it, or him.  I’m afraid a fellow can’t anticipate his years—­not so lucky!”

“By Jove! we shall have to be philosophers before we breakfast!” Algernon exclaimed.  “It’s nine.  I’ve to be tied to the stake at ten, chained and muzzled—­a leetle-a dawg!  I wish I hadn’t had to leave the service.  It was a vile conspiracy against me there, Ned.  Hang all tradesmen!  I sit on a stool, and add up figures.  I work harder than a nigger in the office.  That’s my life:  but I must feed.  It’s no use going to the office in a rage.”

“Will you try on the gloves again?” was Edward’s mild suggestion.

Algernon thanked him, and replied that he knew him.  Edward hit hard when he was empty.

They now affected patience, as far as silence went to make up an element of that sublime quality.  The chops arriving, they disdained the mask.  Algernon fired his glove just over the waiter’s head, and Edward put the ease to the man’s conscience; after which they sat and ate, talking little.  The difference between them was, that Edward knew the state of Algernon’s mind and what was working within it, while the latter stared at a blank wall as regarded Edward’s.