‘Haven’t you one single spark of curiosity?’ he began.

‘What about?’ said Evan.

’Why, about my amazing luck!  You haven’t asked a question.  A matter of course.’

Evan complimented him by asking a question:  saying that Jack’s luck certainly was wonderful.

‘Wonderful, you call it,’ said Jack, witheringly.  ’And what’s more wonderful is, that I’d give up all for quiet quarters in the Green Dragon.  I knew I was prophetic.  I knew I should regret that peaceful hostelry.  Diocletian, if you like.  I beg you to listen.  I can’t walk so fast without danger.’

‘Well, speak out, man.  What’s the matter with you?’ cried Evan, impatiently.

Jack shook his head:  ‘I see a total absence of sympathy,’ he remarked.  ’I can’t.’

‘Then stand out of the way.’

Jack let him pass, exclaiming, with cold irony, ’I will pay homage to a loftier Nine!’

Mr. Raikes could not in his soul imagine that Evan was really so little inquisitive concerning a business of such importance as the trouble that possessed him.  He watched his friend striding off, incredulously, and then commenced running in pursuit.

’Harrington, I give in; I surrender; you reduce me to prose.  Thy nine have conquered my nine!—­pardon me, old fellow.  I’m immensely upset.  This is the first day in my life that I ever felt what indigestion is.  Egad, I’ve got something to derange the best digestion going!

’Look here, Harrington.  What happened to you today, I declare I think nothing of.  You owe me your assistance, you do, indeed; for if it hadn’t been for the fearful fascinations of your sister—­that divine Countess—­I should have been engaged to somebody by this time, and profited by the opportunity held out to me, and which is now gone.  I ’m disgraced.  I ’m known.  And the worst of it is, I must face people.  I daren’t turn tail.  Did you ever hear of such a dilemma?’

‘Ay,’ quoth Evan, ‘what is it?’

Raikes turned pale.  ‘Then you haven’t heard of it?’ ‘Not a word.’

’Then it’s all for me to tell.  I called on Messrs. Grist.  I dined at the Aurora afterwards.  Depend upon it, Harrington, we’re led by a star.  I mean, fellows with anything in them are.  I recognized our Fallow field host, and thinking to draw him out, I told our mutual histories.  Next day I went to these Messrs. Grist.  They proposed the membership for Fallow field, five hundred a year, and the loan of a curricle, on condition.  It ’s singular, Harrington; before anybody knew of the condition I didn’t care about it a bit.  It seemed to me childish.  Who would think of minding wearing a tin plate?  But now!—­the sufferings of Orestes—­what are they to mine?  He wasn’t tied to his Furies.  They did hover a little above him; but as for me, I’m scorched; and I mustn’t say where:  my mouth is locked; the social laws which forbid the employment of obsolete words arrest my exclamations of despair.  What do you advise?’